Chattanooga, TN, January 8, 2016– Patricia Egen Consulting, LLC is pleased to announce that Anne Johnson, President of Your Software Coach, will join us as Assistant Vice President and Director of Business Development. “Anne is an accomplished trainer and consultant with over 30 years of experience in technology and business consulting. Her attention to detail and business savvy along with her charming southern personality blends well with our company and we are thrilled to have her as part

Yesterday I was once again reminded of something I read in a book by Dale Carnegie: "91% of customers say they give referrals yet only 11% of salespeople ask for them." One of my clients said they were really happy with what we had done and that they were going to refer us to their business networking group. And I asked myself, "self, when was the last time you asked for a referral?" Quick rap on the forehead, and then a postit note saying "Ask for a Referral" placed on the monitor. Such

Spring is in the air and it's time for some spring cleaning.  How often do your scrub your contact lists? How often do you check for duplicates and merge them? If you are like most people, not often enough. That's not surprising.  We all get caught up in our day to day work schedules so data cleansing is not high on the priority list.  But it should be.  Bad data costs money - in efficiency, lost revenue, wasted marketing expenditures, and a variety of other ways. And you

This is another in one of my information ninja articles.  Information Ninja is what one of my customers calls me. I told him, no, it is my job to make him one.  He laughed and said he wasn't quite sure that was the case. But indeed it is.  I know how to find data and report on it - which is what this article is all about. But he knows his business. He knows the numbers he wants to see or, in many cases, what numbers he is not seeing - ie sales calls not being made.  I

Yet again, I met with a new client to discuss their current business "problem" or like I call them - "challenge."  The client called me looking for a silver bullet or tool.  By the end of the discussion, I believe I had them headed down the right path - that of better defining the process and problem and coming up with an appropriate solution that may or may not be based on a specific tool. This happens all the time.  That made me realize it would make a good blog article.  

A client of mine called me last week concerned about some of his information showing up on a competitor's blog. When we looked at the article, it was very apparent that entire paragraphs had been copied and used in the blog. This indeed was plagerism and he called me for advice on his next steps. My client started blogging at my suggestion and I've been giving him advice on how to properly blog, including blogging etiquette. Playing nice, asking permission, and insuring that he also cited his

CRM. We have all heard that term by now. To many it means having a process in place to manage customer relationships. To others it is a tool. To me, it's all of the above. But before you can define what CRM means to you, you need to have an end goal in mind. What is the end result you want to accomplish. Are you small business trying to get new customers? Are you a large organization wanting to reach out to existing clients to improve the relationship you have with them? Are you suffering from

Recently, I had a very interesting but somewhat unpopular conversation with my staff.  The  topic was  multi-tasking - or in this case, the inability to do so.  It turns out this is hard to do in our ever changing world.  There are constant interruptions and distractions that make it a challenge to keep on track.  In this case,  I wasn't asking for them to build me a space ship to go out in search of the final frontier.  We all just needed to step it up a