Posting Your Initial Entries. Login

Transcription

1 Posting Your Initial Entries Login To login, click on the Login link on the gray bar, enter your UserName (i.e. your Screen Name,) and your Password, and click Login

2 Quick Reference Whenever you login, the system will initially take you to the Quick Reference screen. The Quick Reference Screen summarizes all of your company s entries at 1, and then shows you the details at 2. It will list any Messages you have at

3 Then at 4 the system will do a quick check of the database to see if there are any automatic matches for your entries. That is, the system will look at the SIC Codes you ve posted for your Products & Services, and see if there are any Users who have posted any Needs having those SIC Codes. It will also look at the SIC Codes of any Needs you ve posted, and see if there are any Users who have posted any Products & Services that match those Needs. Since nothing has been posted yet, we need to start posting our initial entries. To start posting your data, click on the button that says Enter/Update on the Navigation bar on the left, so that it looks like the image on the right: This will open the Enter / Update menu. Click on the Company Description link to start

4 Enter Your Company Description The first thing to post is a description of your company. This can come from one of your company s brochures, or it s Web site. The more detail you provide, the more likely will it be that people can find you when they re looking for a solution. When you ve finished entering your Company Description, click on Save. You can go back and edit it at anytime. Click on Continue to go on to the next step

5 Post Your Company s Products & Services You can then post your company s Products & Services, using SIC Codes. The system gives you three ways to post your company s Products & Services especially useful if you don t know what SIC Codes to use. 1. The Drill-Down method lets you find the right SIC Codes by drilling down through the SIC Code hierarchy. 2. You can find an SIC Code by searching for a keyword in the SIC Code description that matches what you make. 3. Or you can enter the exact SIC Code, if you know what it is. Let s start with the Drill Down Method, and we ll assume that the company is JV/M, a company that does professional B2B telemarketing

6 Drill-Down Method To illustrate the Drill-Down method, we ll show a series of screen shots that show how we can get to finer and finer levels of specificity with our SIC Codes. Clicking on the Drill-Down button shows you the top level of SIC Codes, which use letter codes A through L

7 JV/M provides a business service, so we ll select by putting a check in the checkbox, and expand on the 1-digit SIC Code I by clicking on the plus sign next to I-Services. Within that, at the 2-digit level, we provide a Business Service, so we ll select it, and expand it so we can get more granular. This is because we want companies who are looking for telemarketing services to find us, not companies who are looking for Business Services

8 If we expand 2-Digit SIC Code 73-Business Services, we get a list of 3-Digit SIC Codes: We re not sure if we fit here (and we know we don t do 7381, 7382, 7383 or 7384), so we re not going to check anything off yet. But we think we might fit under 7389, so we ll expand it. And there it is, Telemarketing Services, so we check it off. We can now do this will all our offerings, including our marketing consulting services, our software systems, etc., so we end up with our full portfolio of Products & Services represented in the database. The drill down method lets you explore the entire list of over 13,000 SIC Codes to find the ones that best describe your business

9 Text Search Method Another way to find your SIC Codes is to use the Text Search method. Simple type a keyword that describes your company s Products & Services into the box, and click Search. This brings up any SIC Codes that have the keyword in the description. In this case, there was only one, Telemarketing Services, which we, of course, already knew about it. If we didn t we could check it, and save it now

10 Find SIC The third method is to enter the SIC Code directly, assuming that you know what it is. Rather than tell you what you already know, the system gives you the hierarchy above the detailed level you entered so you can quickly check them off, if you want. When you get done, you should have a list of SIC Codes posted that represent all of your company s Products & Services. Note that you can post as an individual, too which is useful for finding job candidates

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12 Posting Your Company s Needs Posting Your Company s Needs works the same way as posting your company s Products & Services, except the source of the information is usually your company s General Ledger, rather than its line card. We buy a lot of different things, some of which are shown below, but they were all entered using the same methods as we used to post our Products & Services. We started by clicking on the Needs button:

13 We then entered a keyword in the Search box, and selected the SIC Codes. We also found a few using the Drill-Down method, and ended up with several pages that look like this: Remember, companies that are profitable buy almost as much as they sell. Companies that are unprofitable buy even more than they sell. (That s why they re unprofitable.) But if you can t identify purchases including labor that are roughly as much as your sales, you re not looking! And, more importantly, you will give other Users the impression that you don t conduct business fairly, since you expect them to post their Needs to get access to yours. This completes your required entries

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