THE RACE: Polls: White House race stable and close

President Barack Obama gestures as he speaks at the Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel during an Obama Victory Fund Reception, Tuesday, June 26, 2012, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Barack Obama gestures as he speaks at the Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel during an Obama Victory Fund Reception, Tuesday, June 26, 2012, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney signs autographs while campaigning at Carter Machinery Company, Inc., in Salem, Va., Tuesday, June 26, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney pins for sale fill a poster board outside of Carter Machinery Company in Salem, Va. on Tuesday, June 26, 2012 during a Romney event at the company. (AP Photo/The Roanoke Times, Kyle Green)

With just over four months to go, polls underscore what's been clear for some time: President Barack Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney are locked in a neck-and-neck race in a closely divided nation.

Obama is clinging to a narrow 47 percent to 44 percent lead over Romney in an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll. The gap was within the poll's margin of error and thus statistically a draw. The numbers match those of an Associated Press-Gfk poll last week.

The NBC-Journal poll also showed that Romney's long business background, which he claims makes him better equipped to fix the economy, is a mixed blessing. Just 23 percent said they viewed Romney more positively because of it while 28 percent said it made them view him more negatively.

Meanwhile, Quinnipiac University polls show Obama leading in three battleground states, 45 to 41 percent in Florida, 47 to 38 percent in Ohio and 45 to 39 points in Pennsylvania. Obama plans a bus trip through Pennsylvania and Ohio next week.

And on the eve of the Supreme Court's big health-care ruling, a Washington Post-ABC News poll shows Americans are equally dissatisfied with the current health care system and with the Obama law intended to improve it, suggesting the high court's decision will not end the sharp national debate over health care.

Without fanfare, Romney on Tuesday won the Utah Republican primary, the last contest of a primary season that began with a crowded field in January. Romney, who went over the top a month ago, added 40 more delegates to his count.

Romney campaigned Wednesday in Northern Virginia. Obama met with the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, was holding an in-town fundraiser and hosting an evening South Lawn picnic for lawmakers.

__

Follow Tom Raum on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tomraum. For more AP political coverage, look for the 2012 Presidential Race in AP Mobile's Big Stories section. Also follow https://twitter.com/APCampaign and AP journalists covering the campaign: https://twitter.com/AP/ap-campaign-2012

Associated Press

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IPO market seen hit by 'Facebook Freeze' in 2Q

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Real Estate Law and An Attorney to Guide You | kkr-fans-news-blog ...

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White House Banks on Refinancing - Intero Real Estate Blog

In this election year with housing still securing a sore spot in the national economy, each presidential candidate is expected to have a plan, or at least some key messaging about what?s to be done.

President Obama?s plan is loud and clear: Let?s make refinancing easier for responsible Americans. It would put more money in their pockets and free up cash to flow more freely into the rest of the economy. And it would help underwater homeowners come up for some air.

?We all stand to benefit by simply refinancing.?

That?s the message on a full-blown refinance section on WhiteHouse.gov dedicated solely to the topic of refinancing as the key to helping Americans and the economy by extension.

The administration estimates the average homeowner could save $3,000 a year by refinancing at today?s low interest rates. What stands in the way for many, however, are complicated application processes, eligibility requirements, costly appraisals and the fact that many homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their homes are currently worth.

Obama essentially wants to remove all the complexities that currently stand in the way and make it easier for responsible homeowners to refinance. The current proposal would establish a quick and easy process for borrowers who are current on their mortgage payments by eliminating tax forms, appraisals and other hurdles.

For underwater borrowers, Obama says the program is designed to help them as well. There?s not a lot of detail about how this would be different from HARP, except for one of the expert videos that alludes to the notion that lenders would have to offer the same low market rate interest rates to underwater borrowers.

The plan is not new, of course. The President previously has talked about it in the press and outlined key specs about how such a program would work. But with elections getting closer, I suspect this will be mentioned with more gusto as a viable option for helping American families.

The refinance plan is very careful to describe eligible borrowers and homeowners as ?responsible? and those who?ve continued to pay on their mortgages through the downturn and recession. This is the deliberate attempt to thwart the impending political response of this being a taxpayer ?bailout? in the same vein as that used for big banks, AIG and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

I think Obama?s administration is also trying to make a valid point: Plenty of responsible homeowners out there really would love to refinance and save hundreds of dollars in the process, but can?t. Let?s reward them by at least making it simpler.

In doing that, we can help the economy as a whole recover a bit faster.

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7 Measures of Sales Performance in Relationship Management ...

A measure of relationship management is a crucial element of sales performance. ?Once the customer relationship has been established, the sales guys job should be about driving more value from it. ?This isn?t just the age old difference between hunters and farmers. ?Sales reps charged with farming an account should also be hunting out new opportunities in that account.

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But how can we tell which reps are doing a great job and which ones need to do better. ?Straight sales value isn?t a sophisticated measure when orders come out, because of the relationship. ?Which metrics can we use to figure out what works and learn lessons from the people who do it well?

On Business.comAnswers there?s a really smart question asked by an even smarter business owner. He?s figured customers are the best source of additional business and wants to target his sales team on building customer relationships. But how can he measure performance by his sales guys in this new dimension. He wants to find out what works and train the entire team to use his best practice.

It?s hard to apply the usual metrics to relationships. They?re necessarily a factor of two or more personalities inter-acting. The sales manager can influence the sales rep but influencing customers is a different matter. Two plus two sometimes equals five. At other times it can equal one and that?s not always because our guy?s getting it wrong.

We suggested maybe trying to measure the B2B relationship, since that?s what really counts, bringing us low cost of sale business, referrals and testimonials.

Maybe if we can identify which B2B combinations work we could then dig a little deeper to find out why they work. That way we can see which combinations work in our favour and distil that information down to who is doing what, right.

The B2B relationship measures we suggested were:

• Share of customer spend
• Joint process improvements
• Joint strategy for new opportunities
• Reliability of customer comittments
• Referrals
• Testimonials
• Engagement in social events

But that was just us Blue Skyeing a strategy.

What do you think?

Is there a way of learning from one client/account team combination lessons we can apply to others?

In today?s social media world we have connections and communication possibilities we never had before but do the measures of?social influence?bear any relation to how and why people do business with us.

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Facebook and Social Media ? The Next Marketing Opportunity ...

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Facebook and Social Media ? The Next Marketing Opportunity

Marketing as an activity is all about reaching the right customers with the right products, and the result sought is delighted customers who are more than willing to open their purses wide enough to boost your revenues. For many years, marketers stalked their target customers through various means and by trying to get their message across to spread awareness about their wares.

Traditional Means of Communication

Traditionally, marketing communications were conducted via print, broadcast and such traditional media through disruptive advertising, where advertisements appear in between the content of interest for the customer.

Traditional media does give a large reach to a marketer with its programming of mass appeal. However, the wastage is equally high, since a large portion of the audience would belong to a different segment than the one that is to be targeted by the marketer.

Enter Social Media and the Internet

The revolution stirred by the internet as a medium took place because of the fact that it is highly personalized and provides more content on-demand than any other available medium. Social sites proliferated far and wide in their usage for a few simple reasons:

The power to create and distribute content is equally available to every user, irrespective of him/her being a customer or a marketer. In the earlier forms of media, that power rested with the editorial staff of the channel or the advertiser, but hardly ever with the user.
The medium is completely personalized, and a user can create or join groups and further create content based on what he/she likes.
Opinions are free and fair. This is one reason why social media is of utmost concern to marketers, since buying decisions are no more influenced as much by advertisements. The traditional word-of-mouth marketing approach has grown leaps and bounds on social networks.

Facebook ? At the Center of Social Media

With 500 million (and growing) unique users worldwide, Facebook is the number one social networking site in terms of activity and subscriptions. What started as a garage initiative by Mark Zuckerberg has now become the biggest phenomenon on the internet.

A user interface that allows for quick communication and the ability to create fan pages and groups at the click of a mouse button are what make Facebook extremely popular. Another important reason for its immense popularity is the wide variety of social applications that have been developed and made available within the Facebook environment.

These applications can allow users and friends to do joint activities like playing games that run endlessly, sharing photos, videos, and web links, and many more.

How does this help a marketer?

Traditionally, media plans were drawn to include television channels, publications, or any other media that can grab maximum eyeballs and effectively reach a selected target audience. The science of segmentation and targeting has become only more accurate in the case of social media.

Facebook provides a wide variety of avenues to communicate with the audience, which opens up an entirely different world of possibilities to have a fruitful dialogue with customers. Some of these methods used popularly by marketers are:

Advertising: The first opportunity, which is the most obvious one, is advertising on Facebook. The difference, however, is the fact that you can create your own advertisement in a matter of minutes and also specify the details of your target group in terms of demographics and types of discussions where you want your advertisement to appear.
Fan Pages: Facebook allows every brand, as well as individual users, to create fan pages for their favorite celebrities and their own homegrown businesses. Large brands have also created their official pages on Facebook that have a huge, immediate fan following around the world. The fan page has immense utility to convey first hand information about the brand and also to collect immediate and frank feedback from your customers.
Branded applications: One of the most effective ways to engage a user toward your brand is by creating an application; this could be a game or a contest, with your branding coming across subtly through it.

What makes Facebook even more exciting is the way it allows you to target your communication sharply just to the customer segment you want to attract. It also provides analytics and page insights that give good feedback and measurement on the activity done.

The options provided by Facebook can be creatively explored and used judiciously for bringing about maximum benefits to any brand.

However, while doing all this, you need to be aware of the fact that customers have an equal say and have the ability to respond immediately to any of your actions with a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Availing the service of a social media consultant to work out a social media strategy may be required so that your efforts will not be in vain.

Get more information here for the best Facebook training available: FACEBOOK TRAINING

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