New Diet

This week my wife and I decided that we were going to start focusing
on our health. We started a diet. This also includes us exercising.

Here is how its going so far.

Monday - Decided to postpone starting diet to Tuesday.

Tuesday - St. Louis visiting Carol's mom. She makes me an apple
pie. I eat two pieces.

Wednesday - Carol & I go for a bike ride. About half way through, I
get sick because I am out of shape. I throw up on the side of the
road. Our legs are now jello. We spend an hour in the hot tub
recovering.

Thursday - I have lunch with some co- workers. I have fat chicken
sandwich with sweet potato fries. Yummy! My wife has almonds. Not
yummy! My wife I and go grocery shopping. We're depressed because we
can't buy anything we like. Except cheese. We bought lots of
cheese. I will be living off cheese for the foreseeable future. I
go for a bike ride. I don't throw up. Woo! Woo!

Friday - I'm snacking on some Atkins snack bar that tastes like card
board.

Stay tuned.......

Leads Stinkin' Up The Place?

For the past couple of years, credit unions have been implementing lead and opportunity management processes and systems. Here is my take on the evolution of our credit union's system thus far. Please feel free to challenge me if I've missed anything.

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1. Just get a lead

That's right! Just get a lead. Any ole' lead will do. Incentives will be paid for leads. Employees are expected to scan for opportunities. Not just opportunities for new checking accounts, savings, etc but for mortgage, investments, and insurance products and services.

Once the lead is generated, the employee's job is done. It's up to someone else to get the business.

2. Need Quality

Departments processing the leads were complaining about quality. They were wading through the stank to find sweet smelling quality leads. To reduce the smell, incentives were based on quality leads.

3. Cross Selling

Systems were created to help employees cross sell products and services. This was the perfume. If an employee can smell, they can cross sell. Incentives are not adjusted.

4. Management Dilemma

Should employees really be paid to help generate business? Isn't that a part of everyone's job?

5. CEO Question

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What's the ROI on the incentives being paid? How much business is the credit union getting from leads?

#4 and #5 are often overlooked or dare I say....IGNORED. In order to truly calculate an ROI, monitoring systems would have to be built. I.T. folks are saying that this is virtually impossible. Especially, given the number of disparate systems an average credit union operates.

Are your leads stinkin' up the place? Our leads were and we decided to start over. We've built a system that is all about efficiency and is based on Web 2.0 standards. Additionally, we're building a monitoring system that will track how the leads are performing. We like happy CEO's.

iWIFI

Obviously, you can browse the Internet using the Safari browser on AT&T's EDGE network. It's not broadband but it will get the job done. However, if you want to speed up the connection, the iPhone does support WIFI. I connected to my wireless network at home. All of sudden, I was browsing the Internet at broadband speed. Nice!