My friend told me Halloween night at Prestonwood (Baptist Church) previous years, but we never went because my husband feels it’s important to go around our own neighborhood even though not many kids (almost none) go around Trick or Treatin’ around here. She said there are rides and games and it’s really fun for kids. We’re likely going to go for other reasons, but you can check out the website for more info here.

There’s also a site that lists things to do for Halloween around Dallas.

It’s kind of sad because Halloween seem to be so different from what I remember when I was a kid. We use to be able to go out (by ourselves) and just have fun. Now everything has changed and it’s all so scary (not in the Halloween sense) and parents go with the kids and also goes to other neighborhood intead of their own.

So it seem that there’s some confusion as to what voting Yes and No would mean for Trinity and the Toll Road. To make it simple here is something I found that makes it more clear. Look at the signs “NO means you want a toll road in our park!” and “Keep their toll road OUT of our park VOTE YES!”

Of course, some people want a nice park without the exhaust around them, but others argue that traffic is so bad, it needs the Toll Road. Read for yourself, here are some opinions from DMN and articles as well. I’m all for nature, everything is turning into buildings and roads, it’s really rare to have a quiet place to relax without reminder of the busy hectic life. Then again, if I had to travel a lot in that direction I’m sure I may have a different take - solution: just build the Toll Road further from it.

I can see how the confusion started. The website votenosavethetrinity.com and all the signs that says “vote no, save the trinity”. Some people will think it’s to save the trinity river and not have the Toll Road, but really it’s saying save the Trinity River Project which include the building of the Toll Road. Will it mean that the project will go ka-put if this doesn’t go through? I do think they should create a nice place there, but anyway - you can see videos of what’s plan for the Trinity River Project on the website and there’s also this 3d rendering. Here is the typical scare tactic from the website: “You realize that, if the toll road is pulled out of the park, Dallas taxpayers will be saddled with millions of dollars in new taxes to pay for and build a different reliever route … a process that will take decades (all while gridlock fills our air with pollutants and Dallas grows by hundreds of thousands more residents).”

More Taxes? Dallas property tax is already insanely high, what other tax wil we need to pay (not having income tax for Texas is a bit of a joke since we are being taxed left and right) - let’s drop the whole thing and lower property tax first.

Anyhow, voting (Proposition 1) is on November 6th, 2007, but early voting is underway for registerd voters in the City of Dallas.

I say call Andres Duany and see what he thinks.

UPDATE: Trinity River Result. Majority of Dallas wants a tollway through it. Looks like it’s all about the concrete and car culture.

The decision we make effects everyone - from the cars we buy to some things we support. See this video from Washington Post and you can see what’s happening with Global Warming. Al Gore was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his climate change work. His documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” won the 2007 Academy Award for best documentary. While I have still not seen it, I’m sure it’s good and carries a great message. While most of us don’t think about it in our every day life, we ought to. I worry about the world our kids will be in and if you have kids, you should think more about it too.

So there’s an article on the neighborhood Little Forest Hills on the Front page of the Dallas Morning News. It was title ‘We got discovered’. I knew the article was coming out, but didn’t know when. The mention of Subdivided by local documentary film maker Dean Terry was in there. It was made as an artistic and personal piece but really turned into something that is powerful and gets you to think.

The film had been broadcast on PBS’ KERA for the Dallas Metro area the beginning of this year and has garnered awards including the World Fest Award for Creative Excellence (and another one that has not been announced, so I can’t mention yet). It was also selected in the Utopia Film Festival which runs October 26-October 28 in Maryland. The film has been quoted as “absolutely beautiful” by Rober Wilonsky of The Dallas Observer. The film has touched many and brought out feelings they were not able to pin point before. It features interviews from Andres Duany (Suburban Nation), Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone, Better Together), and others who had studied the effects of sprawls and suburbia. The DVD has extra interviews that were left out of the final cut.

I personal know the story and I lived it just as the film was made. I lived in Little Forest Hills a month or so prior to finding our first home in North Dallas. The mistake we made was looking for a kind of house (contemporary) and didn’t spend as much time with researching about the neighborhood. At Little Forest Hills, we took afternoon walks and people waved and says hi (yes even if you don’t know them). Far different in far North Dallas. People don’t wave hi or say hi, they sometimes walk across the street to the other side of the sidewalk to avoid any eye contact (yeah, amazing but true). This is of course my experience and I can’t say the same for others, but it really was a “cold” feeling living in North Dallas. Luckily, we found another neighborhood that had the friendly vibe of Little Forest Hills, but I’m not going to say where since I don’t exactly want it to be “discovered”…at least by the developers (although you can tell they are sneaking in).

Majority of the people at Little Forest Hills have been trying to get the neighborhood to be a conservation neighborhood and they’ve been using the tagline of “Keep Little Forest Hills Funky”. Which is a perfect fit. It is indeed “funky” and you just can’t create neighborhoods like this and developers are coming in and building the McMansions. This does ruin the neighborhood’s feel of funkiness and uniqueness. Alot of people want the conservation to go through just to provide guidelines for rebuilts (a lot of houses are on the small side, but rebuilding does not mean it has to be huge and look like every other house), but because of some that don’t, it makes it hard to get it done. The City of Dallas should just make the call and save this neighborhood and maintain it’s funky charm. I mean, does Dallas really want all the houses to turn into McMansions?

*Subdivided DVD is also available at some libraries: Harvard, UT Dallas, Dallas Libary, and more. But of course, you should support independent art and buy the DVD!

Is Your Sales Process Working or Is Your Sales Team Chasing Prospect Rainbows?

As Management Consulting Specialists, Aligning Sales, Marketing and Business Strategies for growth-directed companies in Dallas, we have identified over 45 key sales process metrics that management teams should use to increase company revenue and build a scalable, replicable sales process for their salespeople.

Selling products and services is a premeditated sport. It is a thinking, calculating, strategizing business process where success is based on planning.

Shooting from the hip only impedes your sales success.

To help you as an individual salesperson or to help your sales team, take the Sales Process Audit below to see if you have a sales program that helps salespeople sell more or a sales program that impedes sales success.

Sales Process Audit

1. Have you documented your sales costs including marketing lead costs, sales man-hour allocation, travel costs, and expenses to capture each new sale from a new prospect?___Yes ___No
2. Have you documented the top ten sales objections and appropriate sales response for each product or service and for each business vertical you sell into?___Yes ___No
3. Has your company analyzed why you lose business for each product or service you sell?___Yes ___No
4. Have you documented your sales process and the steps needed to secure a contract or a purchase order?___Yes ___No
5. Have you developed a centralized sales tool box with support and training materials so your sales process is replicable and scalable for new sales team members?___Yes ___No
6. Do you have a written policy on pricing guidelines that is published for the sales team to follow?___Yes ___No
7. Does your sales team have written guidelines and business examples for all prospect correspondence including emails, proposals, and direct sales letters for each stage of your sales process?___Yes ___No
8. Do you have a written sales process for forecasting based on the specific criteria that is needed for each sales stage?___Yes ___No
9. Do you track and use a specific sales methodology for each title your sales reps sell to?___Yes ___No
10. Are your sales quotas based on identified market gap analysis, where demand is greater than supply by vertical for each product or service you sell?___Yes ___No

Test Scoring

All correct answers are yes. Give yourself 10 points for each right answer.

What did you score?

If your score is below 75%, you need to rebuild and plan your sales process more.

Would you like to Evaluate Your Revenue Capture Success in more detail?  Visit this link and request a copy of the Value Forward Sales and Marketing Scorecard. It is a management business assessment tool designed to help you to evaluate your firm’s revenue capture success and compare your current operating model against industry best practices to help your company achieve its peak performance. The scorecard contains 100 questions on your sales and marketing methodology and supplies recommended best practices to increase your business success.

For businesses in the greater Dallas area getting lost in the sea of obscurity underneath the ever-growing plethora of businesses is becoming as easy as racking up tolls. Setting yourself apart is an essential component of any business. In today’s technology age, you can become just as obscure (if not more) with your Internet presence as you can your physical presence. Here are a few tips to increase your visibility online, sales in all areas, and become a trend setter in your industry rather than a bench warmer riding the endless pine.

1. Put your business out there. Word of mouth is always a great way to promote your business. However, society is not as dependent upon this ancient information passing method as it used to be. People today look online to determine which restaurants to eat at, which stores to shop at, and which products they want to buy. If they cannot find you online, then odds are good they won’t find you offline either. Building an informative, targeted, and brand-developed website is no longer a step-up, it is a must have.

2. Don’t just build a website, build the right website. Too many businesses just think that any website should suffice as presenting themselves online. This is just not the case as your website is your one-stop shot for making an impression, and that impression does not last long. The average site is viewed for less than 10 seconds. If you don’t make a graphically appealing statement in that amount of time then you lose numerous potential customers before you even got a chance to present yourself. You know your business is better than others out there, so make sure you give your establishment a better shot by providing something that people or going to look at and more importantly, want to look at. Choose a quality web design company, located right here in Dallas, to help your business make the right impression.

3. Market your online presence. Just as you would send out fliers, mailers, print ads, and more for your brick and mortar location, you would also do the same for your online location as well. Simply building a website is not enough to get the masses to come flooding through your doors. You must market your website with just as much vigor as you would your regular business. The world of search marketing is constantly evolving and you should do yourself the favor of researching search engine marketing services to help promote your online brand.

One could not say enough how important it is to put a quality online establishment on the web for thousands of potential customers to view. Your website works for your business even while your are not. To the savvy entrepreneur, that is an investment worth making. A quality online presence can level the playing field for your small business, or even large businesses, against other competitors. Where do you stand?

So I’m a little late, but I think you can still vote online. Not sure when they cut off the time for online voting. Right, intro…this is voting for Mark Cuban on Dancing With the Stars. I missed it tonight since I just woke up from napping/catching up on sleep with my 7 months old, but now I’m wide awake.

Anyway, I’ll probably catch the showing on abc.com since they’ll have it up by the next day. That’s what’s great about the internet now. I miss something and I can still watch it…at least for some shows. Why not Tivo? I guess I can do that, but really I’m on my laptop so much, I can work on things and watch things at the same time (in bed though). ABC has actually got some of my favorites shows, at least for network TV, it’s pretty good. Ugly Betty - I love. It actually makes me laugh at times and last week was just sad and a good surprising ending. LOST - I also love and it’s probably the only thing my husband and I would watch together on time. We Tivo other shows like Weeds and Flight of the Concord (it’s nerdy funny).

Oh right, so vote for Mark Cuban and here are the reasons why:
1. If you start reading his blog more. He’s actually more real and human (like everyone else with a family…except he’s got billions).
2. He’s passionate and determined.
3. He’s 49 and still dancing (and in front of the world). Plus the fact that he just had hip replacement a few months ago and still keeps going and going…like the energizer bunny…
4. He seems very down to earth and a good family man (he’s got 2 daughters).
5. He uses a Apple Mac now (Love Mac!)
6. He lives in Dallas as do most of us here.

That’s not voting for his dancing you say? Well, on shows like these, personality goes further than the actual dancing, but I haven’t seem tonight’s dance so I can’t really say too much about the dancing part. I only know he’s to do the Mambo, which supposedly is all about the hip.

You can also vote up to 10 times each line, or each online account you have (online voting ends noon on the day of the result show):
Register or go straight to the site if you already have an account with ABC.