Who is Barack Obama?

Who exactly is Barack Obama, and why does he deserve to be President? Obama is a Democratic senator from Illinois, who is sitting as only the fifth African American Senator in United States history. Couple that with the fact that he is currently the only African American serving in the Senate and you must concede that he is definitely determined.

Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996 for the first time, and since has served 3 terms there, including this term. He tried a very unsuccessful run in 2000 for the United States House of Representatives. He lost by a margin of 61% to 30%, and lost to four term incumbent Bobby Rush, whom was a former Black Panther. It leads people to question, if he was unsuccessful at a House of Representatives bid, how is he going to be successful at a bid for the White House.

One major point which will likely help Obama is he won an endorsement from the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police for his support of gun control measures. Coming in the weeks and months following the tragic Virginia Tech massacre, this one point may really pull him ahead of some of the other candidates for the election since so many families are feeling the brutal pain and faced with burying their loved ones. Is this enough, will this one measure be enough to place Barack Obama in the White House?

At this point it looks as if not, but that's not to say that Obama does not have his supporters, in fact he is in the lead as one of the 2008 Presidential hopefuls who has accumulated the most money so far. Will this success rate hold out, it is really enough and does he have enough supporters to win this election? At this point, Obama is leading the polls in the youth votes, with more young adults supporting him than any other democratic candidate.

Last polls showed that Obama lead the race with 35% of the 18 to 24 year-old crowd, with Hillary Clinton coming in at second place with 28% of the same age group. While these numbers may not seem high, they represent thousands of people in the difference. The 2006 midterm election saw a huge turnout of young voters, and analysts are wondering if 2008 will see another huge increase of youth voters coming out to express their opinion.

Obama is a relative newcomer to the political arena, especially the national arena which is a hard place to be successful, and battling Clinton is no small feat, especially since she has been a major political figure since her husband was elected President in 1992. But with all of Hillary's experience, can Barack pull ahead and win? He has managed to pull in 104,000 donors for his election fund. Will all of those votes actually manage to pull through and pay off at election time?

Will his stand on guns and his place in the youth poles be enough to move him towards the White House in a successful bid? Time will tell as the Democratic hopefuls' battle it out in the political arena. One thing has been clear, at this point Obama has made it clear he is not running for the number two slot on a ticket, he is running to win.

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Tricks to sell your product

The whole idea of the marketing and sales is to play with the psychology of the consumers. In any campaign, efforts should be made it make it so influential that the decision making of the customer is totally in the favor of the company.

There are some tricks to manipulate the mind of the consumers, which can be utilized by not only ordinary sales person, but can be used by larger firms. Although they are used unknowingly, there is no set list.

Mutual exchanging is the first and powerful trick. The company can start with giving something for free to the customer. He will take it for the first time, but from next time he will feel obliged and will try to return the favor. Offering the product for free initially can do this. And if the customer is satisfied with the product, he will buy it for himself from next time. Some salespersons get confused with this principle. For example, it is ineffective and wrong according to this principle, to quote ‘Spend over $25 and get a free t-shirt’. The offer is not free; the customer has to spend something to get the free product. The product being given should be totally free without any condition to be fulfilled. For example, the line ‘Get the latest lipstick shade absolutely free’ will do the trick. If the shade is really good, they will buy it the next time and might even think of buying other shades of lipstick.

The next trick is to present something as of high value, but the company should incur only small or no amount in producing it, like information. It can tempt the customer by saying that the information provided to them is a big time secret and is not known to anyone at all. But some mess it up, by saying that they are providing very valuable information, but it turns out to be another advertisement.

Another example is giving out free sample to the targeted customers. Again the mistake made here is that companies distribute samples of poor quality or rejected products. This certainly lowers the customers liking towards the product and he will assume that’s the way the product is actually and won’t go ahead to buy it.

Use words, which initiate immediate action, like ‘Limited time offer’, ‘Offer ending soon’, and ‘Offer till stocks lasts’ are really motivating. The customer gets the impression that the offer will end really soon as the products are limited edition and he should go out and buy it at the very first chance. This works well specially with customers who have an interest in collecting antiques, collectibles and anything which are not easily available.

Tricking the customer in making a commitment is another next good method to increase sales. The trick is to make the customer to take small steps toward the goal, without realizing about it. Like when the customer requests for some information, provide them with the relevant information for free and make them fill a form and take contact information from them. This is like committing to get offers and information about products in future. Do not advertise in this step. In the next step advertisements about products and services can be sent to the customer to the address provided by them. Conducting surveys is another example.

Lottery is another good method. When a person buys a lottery ticket, he fills his address on the ticket. This information can be used to contact the customer in future. In the above practices it’s very vital to not to advertise in the first step. Only after getting the customer contact information, should promotional mails be mailed to him. Long advertisements that are featured in the newspaper are a small twist to this trick. If the customer invests time to read the whole advertisement, he has committed and will surely respond to the ad.

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