Securities Market Line

Expert witnesses are generally experts in their field of work and many of them possess higher qualifications like a PhD degree. Though a doctorate is not a mandatory qualification required, experience and sound knowledge of their concerned field are factors that are important. The more education a person has, the more he/she will be trusted by the court to be an expert witness. The qualifications of the expert witness are generally verified by the concerned court authorities and so you should neatly document and present your skills. Many experts, to popularize and advertise their services, use websites through which they can also convey their availability to be a witness. There are schools that provide training to the potential candidates and help them obtain the important experience of the work. The work of the expert witness generally involves producing and preparing documents after studying the evidence cases.

What are the Required Skills to Become an Expert Witness?
Becoming an expert witness is quite a challenging task. Apart from holding the right qualification, the expert witness should also possess many other skills, some of them being communication and writing skills. He should have writing skills because it is the work of the expert witness to document all the evidence for the scrutiny of the court authorities. He also has to take care that the written format is well documented and easy to understand for the people involved.

How Much Can an Expert Witness Expect to be Paid?
Considering the challenge and responsibility involved with the job, expert witnesses are quite substantially paid. There are as such no perfect salary figures and the pay varies from one case to another. An expert who has experience of giving testimony to the court would demand a higher amount and would be well paid than the experts who have no court experience. The pay of expert witnesses is quite similar to the pay scale of lawyers. In special cases, the expert witnesses can cut down on their fees, like in cases where the people involved with the case cannot pay the required fees. This entirely depends on the experts and the lawyers involved with the case.

Mentioned above were the details to become an expert witness, a job that comes with high responsibility. Expert witnesses, to avoid controversy, should be impartial and not let pressure affect them to modify the truth and authenticity of their opinion. This is because their findings have a very high say on deciding the fate of the case and deciding the judgment. If you are interested in becoming an expert witness, you should have a sound background knowledge of your area of work and the ability to justify your points.

They are professionals in public relations management, and have a deep knowledge of how to approach the public to sell products. They manage and direct various publicity campaigns to target future customers, and also coordinate communication between different teams in the process. For smooth sales, they also need to work with stockholders and wholesalers, and even promotional managers. Their primary responsibility is to publicize the benefits that their company offers. They also have to be attentive to the social, economic, and political changes that can have an adverse effect on the organization.

Marketing Managers: They are the ones who perform a detailed study on the company’s marketing plans, and are in touch with the top management for developing new strategies. They closely work with product development managers and market research managers, to figure out the approximate demand for their goods and services, in comparison to the competitor’s products. Moreover, they research on which areas and sectors can have potential consumers for their products, and help the management in deciding prices of goods and services.

Advertising Managers: Their primary responsibility is to supervise product promotions and the advertising staff. In small-scale companies, they serve as coordinators between the company and the advertising agency. In large companies, they supervise their company’s creative, media services, and advertising departments. They also handle the advertisements and presentations delegated to the creative department, and coordinate the publicity expenses with the accounts department and the top management.

Sales Managers: Their duty is to prepare a sales program which includes assigning areas to the sales staff, setting targets, and providing training to the marketers or sales representatives. In large manufacturing companies, regional sales managers and their subordinates report to their respective sales managers. For an increase in sales, they have to maintain good contacts with the local and regional distributors and wholesalers. The information collected by sales representatives is used to study the demand statistics, and the product inventory is prepared accordingly.

Keep the Slogan Short: Remember that your target market will not stop by your billboard in a heavy moving traffic and read its content. So, you need to keep it as short and simple as possible so someone can gather maximum information in one glance. Keep your slogan as short as possible. Often, I end up reading only half the product slogan because it was too long. Succinct is effective. Also, it should be very catchy and reading it once should leave an impact on the commuter. The slogan should deliver the message and be informative. Don’t beat around the bush. Tell your customers what they need to know.

Color Combination: Colors are always an integral part of marketing in almost all types of businesses. I am sure, you are aware of the three traffic signal colors: red, yellow and green. Yellow stands for caution and we are conditioned to automatically pay attention to anything that is yellow especially while driving. Well, some clever advertisers have made a successful use of this fact by using yellow as a background color on billboard advertisements. For font colors, red is a great choice. Others include black, navy blue or dark green. The colors should be contrasting with the background. These tactics work as best practices for billboard advertising.

Location of the Billboard: This is one of the most important factors that you should keep in mind while opting for billboard advertising. Ask the advertising company about the location of the billboard and personally go to check it out and assess its visibility as well as the size of the traffic that can be expected each day. Do remember that as busy the road would be, as high would be the cost of the billboard. Make sure there are no trees in the surrounding area that obstruct the view of the billboard. Ideally, you should be inspecting the location of billboard prior to signing the contract for advertising with the company. This is one of the best practices for billboard advertising. In fact, if you are targeting a particular market, make sure that your prospective customers frequent to that location often in a day. For example, to market a real estate company, highways and commercial places are ideal.

Attractive Pictures: An attractive picture instantly catches everyone’s attention. It should be different, out of the box and must represent the company’s creativity while delivering the right message about the product. You don’t have to stick to the conventional picture format for your billboard. Dare to be different and try something drastic like an embossed image, a huge version of the product or a statue. The ultimate visual effect should be appealing and memorable.

1. Premium and Cost Over Coverage
A common mistake that almost all of us fall prey to is considering the total price of the insurance, rather than the total health insurance coverage. Not to worry, it’s simply the human nature and psychology at its worse. What happens is that we go to shop for a health insurance, and we end up with a broker who offers us a policy at great premium and a nice payment schedule. It completely fits into our income structure and all. The mistake here is that we are so attracted by the lucrative premium scheme, that we fail to consider the flaws in the coverage of the policy, and we end up making a significantly bad choice.
•The Truth: The rule of thumb is that the better the coverage, the higher is the premium. Now, when you take up a policy which has a low premium, it is cheap, in almost all aspects, by the virtue of price as well as coverage. Ultimately, the compensation that you are going to get is well, negligible.
•The Solution: In order to avoid such a mistake, one can initiate a simple solution. When you go insurance shopping, you can simply take a look at the ‘terms and conditions’ of the policy. These will give you 3 important tell-tale facts, namely, the body parts which are covered by the policy, the ailments, diseases, the incidences and situations in the light of which the medical procedure was initiated, and lastly, the medical conditions, ailments, and diseases which are excluded all together from the coverage. In case of a ‘cheap’ policy, you will find that the last list is pretty long.
2. Comparison of the Coverage, Premium, Deductible, and the Compensation Against Claim
The second error that we tend to make is not comparing the coverage, premium, deductible, and the compensation against the claim.
1.The coverage is the total amount and the extent of incidence upon which the compensation is payable as per the policy.
2.Secondly, the premium is the payment (monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, or yearly) which is made to keep the policy going and the coverage active.
3.The deductible is a small portion of a medical bill which one needs to pay before the remaining amount is compensated for (this figure is usually stated in a percentage in the terms and conditions of the policy).
4.The claim is the total amount of medical bill minus the deductible.
5.The compensation on the other hand is the total sanctioned amount of the claim which is paid to you by the company.
Simply put, while taking up an insurance policy, we rarely look into the proportions of all the five aspects, and often end up paying more premium for a far lesser or narrower coverage. On the other hand, one might also have a massive deductible and a rather small compensation, which is quite disappointing.
•The Truth: The coverage and premium or the deductible and the compensation are never going to be equal, yet they need to be reasonably proportionate.
•The Solution: When you take up an insurance policy, the premium and the deductible should not be outrageously dispropotionate in comparison to the compensation and coverage. If you find anything irrational and exorbitant, put the policy quotation in trash. You will of course find the deductible percentages, covered and excluded items, claim protocols, and such other details in the documents of the policy.