There is nothing like an economic downturn to think about doing a business makeover.   You might want to consider the business model itself, your branding, logos, colors, symbols, and especially your marketing and merchandising efforts.

Pepsico is doing a total business makeover.  To the tune of $1.2 Billion over the next three years.  A recent article in Advertising Age reports that Pepsico will be closing six plants and laying off thousand of employees.   The business will revamp the branding on its carbonated soft drinks and will review the branding on its Gatorade products as well.

Why?  Business is lousy.  Sales have fallen off.   With respect to soft drinks, in tough economic times people will drink tap water and eschew the dubious virtues of carbonated soft drinks.   Pepsico will change its logos so that the core Pepsi Cola will show a series of smalls on the white part of the label, a grin will be used for Diet Pepsi, and Pepsi Max will display a laugh.  I say forget the smiles, laughs and grins.   Perhaps it would be better to reexamine the possibility of switching out the icky corn syrup sweetener and replacing it with sugar, just like in the good old days.   That would go a long way, I believe, in gaining new appeal.   But, hey, for $1.2 Billion they are entitled to make their own mistakes.

So with Pepsico doing this huge makeover, is it time for you to look at your own business?   In this great economic bakeoff it’s time to see which aspects of your programs work for you and which do not.   Look for ways to cut costs by making your business more efficient.  Look to hire employees who can bring you up to the cutting edge of business technology.   Be sure to have a preemployment screening program in place to make sure they are who they say they are.   Conduct business research and business intelligence so when you conduct business development you are not fishing for loser clients who can’t pay their bills.

If you have cash, then use it as a resource to cut better deals with your vendors and suppliers.  There are so many late pays right now you can cut yourself better rates and service by virtue of your ability to pay, and to pay quickly.   Look over your branding, your logos.  Make sure you business model is fresh and not outmoded, reminiscent of these sorry times.  Change what you need to change.   As for the forthcoming Pepsi-type smiley faces, I’ll leave that up to you.

In this day and age and with the downturn in the economy, it is all the more important to create marketing and sales materials that tells your prospective clients why they should be buying from you.  Jeff Thull, in his blog article on Inc.com explains the difference between a value proposition and a value assumption.   This is a terrific article that helps galanize your thoughts on how to pitch your clients.

Thull notes the difference between selling a proposition to which your potential client must ascertain the relevance of your goods and services and its advantage to his business.   Positioning a value assumpion enables the prospective client to draw his own conclusions.

Thull’s article is well worth reading.  It should not only assist in defining your company’s approach to sales, but should assist you in deciding what sales personnel, employment candidates are the best fit for your company’s needs.   When you do plan to hire, you should be considering professional reference checks as part of your preemployming screening concerns.   Reference checks will help you determine the skills sets of your employment candidates.

Check them out before you hire.

There are sales people, and there are order takers posing as sales people. Sales people, the good ones, can sell almost anything. Order takes are another story. In an economic downturn, order takers lack the skills to meet the challenges. Good sales people can boost your business.

That’s why it is smart for any business to look for good sales people. Good sales people are relationship builders who know how to close without being neither pushy nor obnoxious. Good sales people can talk to the client and understand that client’s needs and address the issues that deliver orders and a good rapport. Good sales people are hard to find.

Of you are looking to upgrade your sales force, then your should conduct professional reference checks as part of your preemployment screening program. References checks will help you determine whether the job candidate actually has the contacts and networking structure he claims. Reference checks will provide insights to the employment candidate’s skill sets and his behavior patterns.

A good sales person should be able to sell his way into the job. During the interview process, your HR Manager and the future supervisors should design questions that allow the candidate to demonstrate what he can do for your company. The applicant’s history will shed light on the future. But not entirely. Some guys out there are just looking for a break, the right chance to really show their stuff.

You just might be the one to give it to them. But remember, check them out before you hire.

Saw an interesting blog article on Everse , Five Resons Why Pre Wedding Background Checks Are Essential that answered a query from a Darius Harris that pretty much summed up the reasons for doing background checks on your prospective paramours and spouses.

Since Corra Group has conducted background checks for dating and on line dating, we couldn’t agree more. The list of reasons is a good list. We would only add the caution that with dating sites you will often find a reluctance to issue background checks.

Background checks on a dating site can deliver and mixed and somewhat confusing message. On one hand the dating site is promising the lover of your dreams. On the other, the are telling you to check it out, in case the person is a child molester or axe murderer. Kind of ruins the mood they are creating.

So before you get married or too involved with someone, check them out. People, even soul mates, can do all kinds of desperate things in this funky economy. When you subscribe to the axiom, expect the unexpected, you will have a better grip on the realities of life.

Frankly, most people don’t check out their lovers or even their spouses to be. And in the aftermath or discover, we get the call. Either they have sensed something wrong, the person made sudden demands, exhibited unwarranted rage, whatever. So then they call. More often than not, I will tell the caller, she or he, mostly she, already knows the answers to the questions. Something is wrong. Only now she, or he, wants closure. To know for sure.

Sometimes it’s the friends who put the future spouse or paramour up to checking out the interested party. She, or he, is too caught up in the romance to sense there is something wrong. All those kind words and flowers tend to cloud the view. The friends, however, can be amazing objective. When it is not their own issues of concern, they can easily see the forest from the trees. But with their own involvements, as with the majority of us, we can never see as clearly. It happens like that. The universe’s joke on we mere mortals.

The last thing we would recommend is that you consider the OFAC or Terror Report. We realize the odds are extremely slim that your paramour would be a terrorists. But there are all kinds of lists and the OFAC reports persons who are excluded from doing business in the United States. For the few bucks, it is worth it. The odds are very slim, but you never really know.

And if you do discover negative aspects to the list provided on EVerse, don’t hang around. We suggest you then consult Paul Simon’s timeless rock and roll classic, “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover.”

Check them out before you hire.

Contractors must now verify that their employees are in the United States legally, under an executive order signed by President Bush last week. For the entire article go to Austin American-Statesman

The government is getting tough, cracking down on undocumented workers. Soon it may cost more than it is worth in fines and closures to hired workers who haven’t entered the country legally. Angry people from all sides of this issue have made their voices heard. So like anything else where force is met with equal and opposite force, a stasis is formed. Nothing is down. Until now.

What does it mean? It means a fair amount of legal issues concerning immigration will be hanging around in the courts for awhile. It means is may become a political issue again in the forthcoming elections. It means if you are a business owner you surely want to run background checks on your employment applicants. You want to run the social security trace to make sure they have a valid number.

It means also that every emotion that surrounds such a controversial issue will be brought to bear via the media and the polling booth. It means we will see all kinds of accusations, ranging from racism to bureaucratic boondoggles. Everybody has an opinion, and some on both sides even possess some valid points.

But if you own a business, you don’t want to be fined or make the news. You don’t want this new crackdown on undocumented workers to affect you adversely. Fines are stiff, and while some may claim there is no such thing as bad publicity, I would beg to differ. You don’t want your workers being marched out to the paddy wagon on the six o’ clock news.

So check them out before you hire.

A tightening economy and skittish financial situations bring out more of the con artists and frauds. Take caution against the bad guys in increasingly desperate times and do your research.

Perhaps one of the few perks of living long enough is you can recognize how things come around in cycles. Be it fashion or issues, or, in this case, the economy, you get to see different patterns emerge. You get to see how the tightening economy elicits the desperation in some.

Desperation in turn breeds irrational judgment and impulsive decisions, which in turn provide a fertile breeding ground for the scam artists of every stripe and variety. These are the swindlers or prey upon your insecurities, who offer through what they term “good deals” and ways to beat the system. While there are ways to beat the system and in fact profit and prosper during dicey economic cycles, the scammers are only out to take your money.

Some of the methods stay the same. But thanks to technology, purveyors of fraud play new angles and work variations on a theme. Thanks to Photo Shop and other software, they can show you Bank Statements and financial statements that will wow you with their number of zeros. They will assure their own financial security by showing you statements listing their assets in the millions. All while asking for you to put up your hard earned money. Not only put it up, but put it up first.

And why must you put it up first? Because their money is tied up somewhere. That is one of the more common excuses. They will lie by telling you their money is tied up in property or in some other way just isn’t liquid. Or, here’s a very popular one, they will tell you they are going through a nasty divorce, and they can’t show their money at the moment. They will request you put up the investment funds for both of you and they will gladly pay you back later.

The sad fact is later never comes around. You are left in the lurch, listening to their excuses about the delays in your joint business proposition. They will tell you that your thing is still “sure,” but there are a few hang ups to overcome. And then there are more delays. And finally, miraculously either the great deal fades away or they do. Leaving you holding the bag.

At Corra we have been approached lately with a lot more fraudulent schemes. Businesses, individuals, financial and equity groups, and attorneys are all requesting business research and records that potentially reveal previous fraudulent or criminal activity. In the course of conducting these background reports we are examining counterfeit financial statements. We discover people living on assumed names or doing business by using the social security numbers of dead people. In fact, some of having been using the decedent’s social security number for so long, it looks legitimate. The social security number first appears as if it belongs to the scammer. Until you look deeper and find out the actual owner of the social security number has been dead a number of years.

At Corra we are also seeing social security numbers in the 700 series. These belonged to retired railroad workers, some of the first to receive social security benefits. The United States government ended the issue or use of these numbers somewhere around 1962. So it’s safe to say there are not many old, dead retired railroad workers participating in fraudulent activity. We are also seeing a few 800 series social security numbers. This series has yet to be issue, legitimately. So be on the lookout for these.

All numbers and documents aside, most scam artists win you over by gaining your confidence, hence the term con artist. They prey on you when you are insecure, when your business is in trouble, or when you are looking for extra bucks to make ends meet. Or, if you are the greedy sort, they prey upon your greed and promise you the type of lucrative returns that sound too good to be true. Because they are too good to be true. Or they are illegal, and more often than not you will end up paying the piper.

The federal government has law enforcement task forces in many major cities, investigating real estate fraud. They are finding rings of realtors, appraisers, mortgage brokers, stand-ins and various and sundry folks who fooled with the numbers to falsify the appraisal value of a house, the net work of the buyer and just about everything else. If you are curious, check your local paper or the national news. Each is filled with stories about this.

But now that the housing market has imploded, the predators are out conning people into investment schemes that will save their personal worth or their businesses. They show you the documents, falsify previous returns and then ask for your money.

Don’t be so quick to leap into anything. With any deal, run background checks and do the corporate research. For suspicious businesses, you can run a business credit report. There are many searches you can conduct for relatively nominal fees. Certainly the fees can save you from being swindled for a lot of money and the embarrassment it brings with it. Nothing is guaranteed. There is always a chance a con artist can slip through the cracks. But due diligence will filter out most of them.

So realize bad times can bring on real opportunity. Legitimate opportunity. But bad times can also bring out the bad people. So watch yourself. As they say in boxing, “protect yourself at all times.”

Corra has seen an accelerated demand in its tenant screening services. The housing crash has steadily accelerated foreclosures, and now more former homeowners are looking to rent property. The fact that mortgages are so tough tom come by also creates a higher renters market. And then of course there are many people waiting on the sidelines for the housing prices to further depreciate, so they too are renting.

The housing crisis has also created financial and domestic issues that have led to more divorces and once married, now single parents and partners are looking for a place to live.

So if you are a property management group, leasing agent, or merely a guy with a couple of apartments to rent, the prudent move is to run background check on all your applicants. Your applicants may have stories, which are either simple or elaborate excuses as to why things are the way they are. They may assure you and beg you, but at the end of the day, if things go wrong, it is you left holding the bag.

Corra has heard the horror stories and has helped clients in need of advice. Our clients are decent people, and sometimes want to be assured that thing are not how they appear to be. But…usually they are how they appear to be. Suspicious and sketchy circumstances almost never pan out into better conditions.

If you are a landlord, you should be running tenant screening, including criminal and credit reports. It may pay to run eviction searches as well. An ounce of prevention and a few bucks is worth the pounds of cure and the thousands you will have to spend in court or in eviction proceedings.

So check them out before you rent to them.

Parents’ Ire Grows at Pedophile’s Unabashed Blog

LOS ANGELES — The search for the self-described pedophile in the large-brimmed black hat commences nearly every day here, with findings posted on chat rooms frequented by mothers.

He was spotted at a fair in Santa Clarita. He recently emerged from the Social Security office on Olympic Boulevard. He tapped away on a computer at the library in Mar Vista. Warnings have gone out. Signs have been posted.

And yet unlike convicted sex offenders, who are required to stay away from places that cater to children, in this case the police can do next to nothing, because this man, Jack McClellan, who has had Web sites detailing how and where he likes to troll for children, appears to be doing nothing illegal.

But his mere presence in Los Angeles — coupled with Mr. McClellan’s commitment to exhibitionistic blogging about his thoughts on little girls — has set parents on edge. One group of mothers, whose members by and large have never met before, will soon band together in a coffee shop to hammer out plans to push lawmakers in Sacramento to legislate Mr. McClellan out of business.

“Just the idea that this person could get away with what he was doing and no one could press charges has made me angry,” said Jane Thompson, a stay-at-home mother in East Los Angeles who recently read Mr. McClellan’s comments about a festival in her neighborhood in which he seemed to be describing her child.

For the entire article go to NYTimes.com

Pedophiles have been on the national radar with increasing frequency. The recent news story in Los Angeles had parents both horrified and up in arms over the child predator who described on the Internet his approach and tactics. Initially, the law enforcement authorities said there wasn’t much they could do to limit this man since he hadn’t really done anything yet. He wasn’t a registered sex offender.

Maybe in his case he wasn’t, but many are. They are listed nationally and on state sites. Corra includes in its state and nationwide criminal database searches the sexual offenders registry in all fifty states. Corra realizes how disruptive a sexual offender can be to the workplace. Most people will hate him, few, if any, with sympathize, and the employee morale can suffer.

In the case of McClellan, the predator in the story, a bond was issued mandating that he stay at least fifteen yards away from any child.

Check them out before you hire.

MySpace: 29,000 Sex Offenders Registered on Site High Number Likely to Spur Calls for Age Verification for Social Networks

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) — MySpace has identified more than 29,000 registered sex offenders on its social network — more than four times the number it claimed to have found in May, according to the North Carolina attorney general’s office.

In the wake of several sex offenses that are alleged to have been traced to contacts on social-networking sites, MySpace earlier this year began checking its registered-user list against a database of registered sex offenders. In May, the News Corp.-owned site said it had found 7,000 users.

Read the full story at AdAge.com

By now most of you have become aware that at least 29,000 persons on the sexual offenders registry are on MySpace. Corra is surprised that everyone is surprised by this. Where else can sexual deviants find such a fertile happy hunting ground as the social networks?

Mind you, these are just the sexual offenders who have the temerity to use their real names. There must be thousands more posing as teenagers or at the very least registering under assumed names.

In the past few months Corra has picked up more sexual offenders on its searches than ever before. As to why this is occurring, Corra has no real idea. It is all conjecture. The main thing to realize that this is happening, and those that can be affected are women in the workplace and your kids at home.

Increasingly, it is becoming clear that background checks are needed by most businesses and even for domestic purposes. The Corra nationwide criminal background search includes the sexual offenders registry. It is key in helping to protect children and women, the more prominent victims of sexual abuse, from grievous harm.

So do yourself a favor. Check them out before you hire. Check them out when they work in your house. And check them out before you start dating. It’s that kind of world.

Corra can go for many months without discovering that our clients’ applicants are on the sexual offenders registry. But during the last six weeks or so we have picked up on somewhere between six and twelve candidates who violated criminal codes and human beings to where they are now required to register on their state’s Sexual Offenders Registry.

Is one such offender working for you? And if so, how comfortable are you about employing them. Considering that several offenders Corra discovered during the last period had habitual records of violent behavior, having them in the work place may give you pause. In these cases they committed sexual battery against women, but there is no reason they could not have violated someone of the same sex or, worse, a child.

I should add that most of the sexual offenders we encountered recently were on the registry because they had violated children in ways that Corra needn’t mention here. And where children are concerned or, for that matter, women in the workplace or even women who are dating, there is always a risk. Single moms, especially, have either been victimized themselves or have had their children victimized by that “wonderful” person they had met online.

So whether as a preemployment screening program or as a predating screening program, run the Nationwide Criminal check to not only see if you are hiring a felon but a sexual offender. The sexual offenders registry is included in the Nationwide Criminal Check. And for the companies who have government contracts, for a few bucks more, Corra will attach the OFAC or Global Terror Report to the Nationwide Criminal Search.

So do yourself a favor and check them out before you hire. Check them out before you date them. Check them out.