Training Sessions

As we discussed in our regional meeting in January, we set goals for the next six months and established a training schedule that is focused on various aspects of increasing our knowledge and honing our skills in drug testing.

Our mission is to become the undisputed leader in all aspects of our industry. This is not an overnight process and requires a lot of hard work and systematic training over an extended period of time. We have the resources, the commitment, and the vision to make this a reality. It is only a question of when, not if, this will happen.

I am absolutely committed to providing you with the tools to make this a reality.

In order to create a library of our training, these webinar sessions are being recorded. You will be receiving a weblink in an email, that when clicked on, will lead you to a website where you can review the last two webinars on Drug Paks. Review these at your leisure and share these with your staff.

Check your email for these links and please save these in a safe place for future reference.

If you have any questions, please contact John Lipp, your Field Operations Director.

See you on Saturday in Sacramento for our Supervisor and Employee Training.

Social Networking

The world is rapidly changing. Your CAMPA SEO Team is always looking for ways to differentiate your services from the competition and to stay ahead of the fast paced marketing curve. An area in Internet marketing that is receiving a lot of attention recently, and is acclaimed by some to be the next big shift in the marketing world, is Social Networking.

Social Networking (sometimes referred to as Social Media) is uncharted territory. There is no right or wrong in this new field, but agile marketing-oriented companies are working hard to get ahead of the pack. We think we belong in this space.

We plan on approaching this new marketing strategy of Social Networking by sticking our toes in to test the waters. Our initial step is to start a California Drug Testing Blog. This blog will encompass all aspects of AccuDiagnostics and its services. The blog will not be an advertisement for our services, but rather an information source for the public.

How does providing information related to drug testing help your business? The best way to understand the value of a blog is to think of someone in your life whom you trust. This person is most likely a reliable source of information; you seek him or her out when you have questions that need factual answers; you can depend on that person; and you value him or her. This is the essence of why blogging works. A business can develop that same trust and respect with its clients. Creating and maintaining a blog is a way for AccuDiagnostics to pass on factual information which the public is seeking, develop a trusting relationship, and be of value to future clients.

The California Drug Testing Blog is a way for AccuDiagnostics to be the Drug Testing Authority in California. The most important reason for CAMPA to pursue this strategy is because your competitors are not blogging, they are not writing articles, and I guarantee they are not prepared to compete on the Internet with those who are.

Doug Briefs CAMPA on AFB Seminar

Here is a summary of Doug’s 2-day small business seminar at Edwards AFB:

The first day included presentations and overviews of various internal AFB departments, how they work, and the functions they perform. Bottom line is that an AFB is like a small city with most of the goods and services being provided by outside companies, either as prime or sub-contractors. AccuDiagnostics will deal with both prime and subcontractors, since all contractors must comply with the Drug-Free Workplace program.

The second day was even better! I sat down with various divisions of the Air Force, as well as contractors who have been, or are looking to secure contracts with the Edwards AFB. One of the more useful pieces information I obtained were three websites:

• Fed Bizz Opps - lists bids on all AFB contracts
• Edwards Air Force Base- also has information on bids - after checking this website out, I could not find the information I needed. I am going to contact a person I met at the seminar and have her help me through this maze of information.
• JT3 - Advanced Warfighter Support - also lists who has the contracts

From the information I gathered at this seminar, I feel I will be able to develop an enormous list of prospects, all of whom must comply with the Drug Free Workplace program. Over time, I will be able to monetize this type of business. As I start my follow-up process, I’ll keep you all posted on how things are developing.

Next Up

CAMPA team members, mark your calendars for Thursday, February 26th, for the upcoming session addressing Drug Pak Training, the next scheduled topic in the CAMPA training sessions. On Thursday, February 12th, Eric from Drug Pak covered the Random Testing. The following training will be next in this series.

Look for an email with the log on information for the 12:00 pm session this Thursday.

How Doug Found the Military Seminar

I asked Doug the thing I ALWAYS want to know - when I hear about a new client, new opportunity or something innovative - "How did you find this seminar?"

True to form for Doug, he had his radar up and operating. I have learned over the years that entrepreneurs tend to make their own luck. I have heard the often repeated lament (from those who never seem to find the gold while mining), “Jack or Ellen is just lucky!”

Hogwash.

The Jacks and Ellens are engaged and have a “can do” attitude. They always ask the next question, they go to ONE more networking event, they follow up with excited clients, and ask who these clients know that they could be introduced to, and they never, Never, NEVER get discouraged over the long term. True, everyone has a day or two when things get the best of them, but the Jacks and Ellens always get their focus readjusted on the half full glass, and then move forward. Discouragement is yesterday’s news.

For Doug, it was being on the Chamber Website and just checking things out, that made this luck happen for him.

A lot of time is spent at Chamber functions, yet how often do you log onto their website for activities and events that come up at the last minute, or are simply posted there? When Doug logged on to his Chamber website, he noticed that there was a seminar announcement and a registration link. Click, click, click and he was off to see "Uncle Sam"- oriented contractors.

Doug will report on his findings next week.

Stay tuned.

What Doug Is Up To

Doug Shares:

I have a two-day business seminar at Edwards AFB, on Wed. and Thurs., 2/18 and 2/19. I’m really excited because the first day is about how to do business with military and its subcontractors; the second day is called “Matchmaking,” where you get 15 minutes to pitch your company in front of dozens of subcontractors. It should be good!

Next Blog Posting: Doug will share how he obtained this opportunity.

Refining Market Niches

The necessity of Internet Marketing becomes more intense everyday. If customers aren’t able to find you on their computers and soon, on their cellular phone (in the near future, cell phones will be used as computers are today), you will not be visible to them and you will not get their business.

Your SEO and AdWord Team is working hard to make the most of our resources. However, they can’t do it alone. Your ideas and inputs are critical. New ideas will take us to the next level in our online marketing efforts.

Recently, your SEO Team has been focusing on specific customer niches. They need your help to determine how to refine the searches for specific market niches. Please share with them the customers you would like to reach.

For example: DNA Testing. The team needs your assistance to understand the specific needs of this market. They also need your insight into this market niche. Give them a call to discuss how they can work with you to fine tune your local searches on specific market niches upon which you wish to focus .

Our Next Step in Our Quest to be the Leader in Online Marketing

Now more than ever, online marketing is the key to every business’s success. Research shows that many businesses will struggle to grow unless they have visibility in Online Marketing.

Your SEO specialists recently attended a seminar presented by Omniture, one of the foremost leaders in Search Engine Optimization, to learn some of the newest strategies in online search and AdWord advertising. In this seminar, social media was introduced as the next step in online marketing. The importance of this emerging trend is encompassed in this statement:

“If your business has not participated in social media yet, start as soon as possible, or else your competitors will!”

Drug testing competitors in your areas have, as a whole, been weak in their online marketing strategies and methods, which means we have a good chance to take and maintain the lead in online marketing in our market segments. Our SEO and Paid per Click campaigns have positioned us for further improvements in the future.

Your SEO specialists allocate a majority of their time finding ways to promote your business in the online world. Social media is the next step we will use to forge our brand in the California Drug Testing market.

More to come on how to use social medial in online marketing.

Test Under Way

As mentioned in the Friday, February 6th Blog posting, your SEO team has begun a test to see if a consistent Classified Ad posting program will have an impact on the ranking in organic search.

Kylee Munn, your SEO Specialist, will be in touch with you from time to time to get additional information for this project. We hope to validate that a little bit of time spent in consistent posting of various classified ads has a marked increase in ranking and ultimately click throughs. This is a three month test. The final results will be reported on or before June 1, 2009.

In the meantime, if you have any questions.

First Drug Pak Online Training Class

The first in the CAMPA series of online training classes for 2009 begins on Thursday, Feb 12th at 12:00 pm. The topic for this session is Setting Up Random Testing Programs in Drug Pak.

Please check your email for the log on information for this Webinar. Drug Pak will host this session. The session will take between 60-75 minutes with questions. Please be able to mute your phone. This session will be recorded for future training purposes. Bring your pen and be prepared to take notes as well as ask your questions.

The session will begin at 12 pm, Thursday, February 12th.

Leveraging Publicity

There are three rules in leveraging an article like Doug wrote and got published in his local chamber:

1. Leverage the article into other venues such as the local paper, other chambers, schools, company newsletters and other local publications that are looking for interesting content for their readers. Keep your ear to the ground and opportunities will present themselves.

2. Get reprints and use them as marketing material.

3. Use it on your website. Work with your Google SEO Specialist to get this article circulating on the Internet with links back to your landing page.

Marketing is like a rain storm. One rain drop does not soak you to the bone. It is the cumulative effect of a lot of raindrops that creates the rain storm that soaks you and everything else to the bone. However, it all starts with one rain drop.

Doug's Local Chamber Article

The business world is full of clichés:

• “Think outside the box"
• "Taking it to the next level"
• "Giving it 110 %,"
• "The only thing certain is change"
• ...etc., etc., ad nauseum...

I hate clichés!

As business owners and entrepreneurs, however, all of us right now are looking for ways to survive and prosper in this nearly unprecedented downward spiraling economy. We need to be looking at any way in which we can lower our operational costs. We can put a freeze on everything and hope to hold on, kind of like a deer in the headlights, or we can look to new ways of doing things that may help us reduce our costs and overhead, and enable us to weather out this recession.

There are many things we could examine about the way we do business, but this article will focus on one area that maybe we have never considered before: our workforce.

Based on research conducted by the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Labor, it is estimated that substance abuse disorders cost the U. S. economy $276 billion a year. Much of that is due to lost productivity and increased healthcare spending. It is estimated that in 2006, 20.4 million people used illegal drugs, and 7 million abused prescription drugs.

"Not MY workers," you say?! Ask yourself if you or any other business owner you know would knowingly hire an abuser of drugs/alcohol. Of course not!! Yet the DOL tells us that 74.9% of all substance abusers are employed, either full or part-time.

Now here’s what a substance abuser who works for us can do to our bottom line, according to the Department of Labor:

Substance abusers:

· Are 25% less productive
· Use 3 times more sick benefits
· Are 4 times more likely to steal from employers or co-workers
· Have turnover rates 2 times that of non-abusers
· Account for 3.6 times as many work related accidents
· Are 5 times more likely to file a Workers’ Comp claim

The DOL also suggests that if your company does not conduct drug testing, up to 20% of your workers could be alcohol/drug abusers.

Here’s a case in point: My fellow AccuDiagnostics franchisee in Rancho Cucamonga has a long-time friend who owns an auto parts wholesale company with 40 drivers. This owner recently decided to establish a drug-free workplace. A policy was developed and put in place with all the workers notified. To implement the program, all workers had to do an initial drug screen.

The owner and several managers were taking bets on the side on how many drivers would show up as positive on their drug screens. Most said there would be 1 or 2, but one of them stuck his neck out and bet there would be 5. When the results came in, they were all wrong. This company had 8 drivers show up positive! That’s 20% of his workforce! At a 25% reduction in productivity, you can do the math on how much the owner was losing, just on performance - let alone sick days, absenteeism, theft, etc.

Next, let’s look at another area of possible cost savings: Workman’s Comp. Any company that has a Safety Program in place that includes a Drug Free Workplace, can get a mod rate adjustment on your premiums. (Check with your provider).

Another thing on Workman’s Comp ... the Government Accounting Office estimates that between 38 – 50 % of all Workman’s Comp claims involve the use of drugs or alcohol. Not everyone is aware of this, but in the state of California, if an injury or accident occurs under the influence of alcohol or drugs, that Workman’s Comp claim can be denied. That can save any company a lot of money! In order to take advantage of this, your company needs an established Drug Free Workplace policy, which would include post injury/accident testing.

Finally, the Department of Health and Human Services points out that an employee with alcohol problems incurs twice the healthcare costs of other employees. Their recommendation is that if a company has an Employee Assistance Program, then a Substance Abuse Program should be part of it.

Companies that did this saw major reductions in costs for:

· Employee turnover
· Short- and long-term disability and workman’s compensation
· Accidents and corporate liability
· Savings from investing in substance abuse treatment can exceed costs by a ratio of 12 to 1

Hopefully, this information will give the reader something to think about, and maybe provide ways to cut operational costs that might not have otherwise been considered.

Doug Kimball
Lancaster/Palmdale
AccuDiagnostics

See tomorrow's blog posting on how to leverage these types of articles.

Managing SEO Results

Plan

In order to ensure that SEO rankings are enhanced by consistently updating on classified websites, your SEO Team will manage and control organic ranking and marketing for all California AccuDiagnostics locations. The ultimate goal is to drive traffic to landing pages and increase the influx of call source calls and conversions.

Goal

Consistent management of classified and other SEO related activities will:

-Increase visitor traffic to landing pages
-Increase conversions
-Increase Call Source calls

Organize

SEO Team will increase organic results by:

-Estimating time at five hours per week
-Posting Free Classified Ads
-Optimizing Directory listings
-Sending external links to landing pages
-Possible Social Networking and blog posting
-Researching new methods
-Utilizing any other suitable means

Measure

Focus on data such as visitor traffic numbers, conversions, and call source calls.

-Create initial comprehensive report including averages of monthly visitors to landing pages, conversions, and call source calls.
-Update this report monthly with current information, including charts and graphs, to compare results.

Results

Your SEO Team will increase visitor traffic to landing pages, conversion, and call source calls, validating that organic results are cost effective.

-Save time and effort for each location
-Streamline process and maximize efforts
-Maximum cost of four month trial period = $800

This project will last for ~ four months and then be evaluated on its effectiveness.

Do You Ever Feel……

...like there are more things to get done in the day than there are hours in the day to do them?

If you do, welcome to the reality of managing your own business. The biggest challenge for entrepreneurs in achieving their financial aspirations is the single element of effective time and event management.

Similar to an Emergency Room in which the nurses and doctors have to triage their case load, focusing on the most critical patients who walk or are carried into the Emergency Room, entrepreneurs need to triage their daily activities, as well. ER doctors handle the cut fingers, stomachaches or bee stings in a prioritized manner, with these issues being addressed in due course, while the life critical situations such as heart attacks, broken bones and identifiable symptomatic pain are handled first.

As each franchisee’s day begins to unfold, issues and items that cry out - me, me, me ... handle me now - demand your attention. Soon you disappear into the Black Hole of Operations and Administration, with the metaphorical cuts and bruises being addressed before mission critical activities such as sales, presentations, networking, and opportunities for customer services. As the day draws to a close, you reflect back on what was accomplished during the day; the realization settles in that a lot of cuts and bruises were treated, but very few heart attacks were focused on.

The more seasoned entrepreneur realizes that some of the critical and non-critical functions of the business can successfully be outsourced or delegated to others. The trick is determining what to outsource or delegate, and how to effectively allocate precious financial resources when there are limited resources.

Here is a rule of thumb – if a task generates money or can free you up to generate money – prioritize this at the top of the triage queue, then either you do it yourself, or delegate or outsource it, and apply money to generate money.

An observation your AdWord and SEO Specialists have noted is that the postings on classified websites have abated over time and are not current. This is directly impacting our SEO rankings and quality of our website ranking on Google.

Solution: Outsource this function…allocate some CAMPA funds to make money.

Check out my next blog posting to review a proposal to solve this problem which will provide more time for other triage sales-oriented items.

Maximizing Your SEO Results

Maximizing SEO and AdWord results is an ongoing effort. Your Google Adwords and SEO Team are continually working to improve your results. To jump start 2009, they are updating your AdWord accounts. Since activating your Google AdWord accounts, conclusive data has been gathered that assists in cleaning up and reconfiguring your accounts to be more cost effective and efficient.

The Team would like your assistance in gathering some additional data. Google AdWord accounts are most effective when they are disseminated over more than a few zip codes. Understanding your trade local area is a good way for the SEO and AdWord Team to increase your exposure. Since the day each location opened for business, you are getting a better idea on the cities each location is servicing. Please take a moment to list each and every city where you are getting clients from, as well as those you would like to reach out to.

To further increase your searchablity, please include the name of geographical areas such as the East Bay, Inland Empire or North County - although these may not be legal names, if customers may search that name, we want to include it.

Providing this information to your SEO and AdWord Team will allow them to manage your area and perhaps increase your advertising territory.

One interesting slice of data is that locations with more cities listed for SEO searches, are receiving a larger influx of traffic. Please provide a complete list of your surrounding cities to kylee.munn@gmail.com.

Deliverable: CAMPA Training Schedule

From the CAMPA Regional Meeting, one of the Deliverables was more training at all levels. The first step in providing this resource to our team is Drug Pak (one hour sessions all starting at 12 pm) and other sales/product training. Please make arrangements to attend these sessions. These webinars will be recorded for you to review and share with your lab techs and other staff members.

February 5th Brainstorming: Center for Drug Test Information - Charlie Santino

February 12th Drug Pak – topic to be announced

February 19th Monthly CAMPA Conference Call/Webinar

February 26th Drug Pak – topic to be announced

February 28th Rick Oakley, Supervisor and Employee Training Regional Training Center (10am-6pm,Tentative)

March 5th Brainstorming

March 12th Drug Pak – topic to be announced

March 9th Monthly CAMPA Conference Call/Webinar

March 26th Drug Pak – topic to be announced

April 2nd Brainstorming

April 9th Drug Pak – topic to be announced

April 16th Monthly CAMPA Conference Call/Webinar

April 23rd Drug Pak – topic to be announced

May 7th Brainstorming

May 14th Drug Pak – topic to be announced

May 21st Monthly CAMPA Conference Call/Webinar

The intent of these sessions is to provide an environment of continuing education. Please schedule these times.