The 25-Hour Day:

Work, Sleep or Play?

     I am about to find more hours in the day to get something important done that I’ve been choosing to backseat since December. I know, I can almost hear all those sharp little skeptical, sarcastic comments now. But, you know what? I’m going to make more time anyway.

     Here’s the background: This is my 311th blog post in the past 370 days, and almost all of those missed were in the first couple of months. It takes me 1-2 hours every night to write, edit, post and cross-promote visitors to the blog through posts on other sites and networks.

     Kathy gave me a webcam for Christmas, and I haven’t made the time to use it or play with it enough to make it be a useful tool. Fridays are the slowest nights for blog visits. Makes sense, right? Who sits around on Friday nights reading blogs?

     Beginning tomorrow, Friday, May 1, 2009, I am going to stop writing Friday blog posts and use the time to start mastering the webcam and applications of it so that I can develop and deliver a series of video clips that will slowly replace Friday night written posts over the next 4-6 weeks, and serve a myriad of other business and educational purposes as well.

     I am working with a range of topics to help:

• Jumpstart entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial ventures without investors 
• Offer step-at-a-time tight-budget marketing how-to’s for business owners and managers 
• Boost professional practice development for doctors and allied medical science and health professionals 
• Spell out proven personal and professional growth and development strategies and tactics for small business and corporate executives that will increase sales 
• Provide little-known proven job-hunting (and hiring) tips 
• Reveal the secrets of keeping “family” in the family business during hard times 
• Lay out a complete menu of practical and realistic ways to grow business in a stagnant economy

. . . among many other “here-and-now” subjects.

     I am planning to create and produce a few series of fast-paced and provocative 3-5 minute video clips. 

     I will greatly appreciate your ideas and feedback about the 3 top topics you would most like to see addressed, and the kinds of input you think would be most helpful to you. The more specific you can be with your suggestions and questions, the more specific I can be with my suggestions and answers. I look forward to hearing from you (email address below; phone number and mailing address at www.TheWriterWorks.com

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      . . . I’m open to your input anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in the subject line) or comment below. Thank you for visiting. Good night and God bless you! halalpiar  # # # 

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Not sure of yourself?

You are breeding failure!

     Data fusion company Jigsaw says, “Sales success depends on sales rep productivity, management effectiveness, and the ability to collaborate…with customers, partners and colleagues.”  

     What’s the connection with self-doubt? Sales rep productivity, management effectiveness, and the ability to collaborate ALL depend on the ability to eliminate self-doubt. Consider the following which you’ve certainly heard, but probably don’t believe. Maybe you think it’s not important enough to actually addreess for more than ten seconds. But it is.

Everything in existence is in existence

only because it exists in your brain.

     If you think you’re not sure of yourself, or your ideas, or your abilities to pull off that big sale, or achieve that far-reaching goal, or dig yourself out of the hole you’re in, you can be sure you’ll succeed at not succeeding.

     Every single second that your mind drifts to doubtful feelings, you are pulling yourself deeper into defeat. Every second you can reverse that feeling counts for getting two seconds closer to success. How can you reverse a negative tide that’s sweeping through you, or under you, over or around you? The answer may sound trite, especially to those low on energy or willpower, but it is fact.

     You must start by learning and using every tidbit of information you can possibly know about you! You are the only person on Earth who knows what makes you tick, but you’ve probably set yourself up thousands of times to sweep what you know about the real you under your own rug!

     If you can know the thoughts, ideas, circumstances, people, environments, feelings, comments, memories, awarenesses, and emotions that weaken you, you are half-way to conquering self-doubt. Work at it. The most self-assured people in the world work at this nonstop for their lifetimes. Fears never go away, but the awareness of what triggers fear can be controlled.

     We’re not talking about simple rationalization here. You can’t read this and then go about your merry way being suddenly transformed and confident. You CAN, however, make a commitment to yourself that you will work at it and keep working at it because fear sucks! Because fear creates self-doubt and self-doubt will make a loser of you, and that itself is a fear to eliminate.

     How successful do you truly think you could be with both hands tied behind your back and a bag over your head? Yet, being afraid and choosing to set yourself up for self-doubt to keep creeping in is creating the same impossible, insurmountable degree of handicap. So the next step is to keep reminding yourself that the feelings that are holding you back, that are threatening to you are ones you somehow choose.

     Take some deep breaths http://halalpiar.com/?page_id=35 and collect yourself and remind yourself that no one knows more than you about you and the ways you do the things you do, so no one else can make choices for you. Choose to rise above it all. Choose to make it work. Choose to make it easy. Choose to be the success you are capable of being. Choose to appreciate your SELF! 

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      . . . I’m open to your input anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in the subject line) or comment below. Thank you for visiting. Good night and God bless you! halalpiar  # # # 

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 “Happiness runs

       in a circular motion…”

 From ’60s songster Donovan: “Happiness runs in a circular motion; life is but a little boat upon the sea…” 

     And (sorry to burst your ad agency’s bubble) HAPPINESS produces sales quicker thanall the ads and promotional materials and sales spiels and websites put together. Ticking off logical product/service features and gulping down huge doses of emotional triggers don’t make sales happen as fast as genuine feelings of happiness that are contagious . . . from ANY one in your organization to ANY one who is an existing customer or prospect.

     That’s not to say you don’t NEED all that traditional and nontraditional support material, but remember that it IS “support material” and that  N~O~T~H~I~N~G  replaces the value of spreading happiness around.

     Great! you say, but where’s the “Happy Button” you’re supposed to push? It’s not like Staple’s “That Was Easy” button (which of course never made anything easy) and sometimes my people or I just feel plain old crummy and we’re simply not happy. So there’s no happiness to pass around. Period. 

     Brrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaattttttttt! The buzzer says you’re wrong!

     Happiness is ALWAYS present. It’s your job to go get it!

Here are 5 STEPS TO A HAPPIER YOU WHO WILL SELL MORE. In fact, if you get TRULY and GENUINELY happier than you were yesterday, I guarantee you you’ll sell more than you did yesterday. Guaranteed! Ready? Here you go:

1) CHOOSE TO STOP SEEING THE SEA OF NEGATIVITY THAT’S ALL AROUND YOU AS NEGATIVE! Click that mental radio station in your head from 24-hour news (which is always negative) to easy listening music. And remember that no one else controls your stations or channel selector or tone and volume settings! No one else decides what goes on inside your head but YOU!

2) CHOOSE TO EXPERIENCE THE NEGATIVE PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE AS NEEDY INSTEAD OF NEGATIVE. Think of them as people who need and are waiting for some positive sign from you — a word, a look, a touch that encourages, reassures. It might only take one positive sign from you for them to become positive themselves. They have a NEED to think and feel more positive. You can make the difference. You have the power.

3) FIX YOUR SIGHTS ON “HERE & NOW.” Take some deep breaths and pay attention to what’s right in front of you with each passing moment. Work to put the past (more than a minute ago) behind you and the future (more than one minute from now) off to the side. Both are fantasy. Reality is the present moment only!

4) SURROUND YOURSELF WITH POSITIVE MUSIC AND POSITIVE PEOPLE. Unfortunately, there’s not ever really enough positive music, but it IS out there. Find it. Dig it out. Put it on your ipod. Put it in your head. It’s your choice, no one else’s. Hum it. Sing it. Whistle it. Write out the lyrics. Program it into your brain. Positive people? They’re everywhere. Put your antennas up!     

5) TRY RECITING ALOUD A PRESENT TENSE GOAL STATEMENT THAT SOUNDS SOMETHING LIKE THE FOLLOWING, AND DO IT REPEATEDLY — WHEN YOU AWAKE, WHEN YOU SHOWER, WHEN YOU EXERCISE, WHEN YOU COMMUTE, WHEN YOU GO TO BED, AS YOU WALK. Something LIKE (make up your own!): “I am happy and healthy and physically fit. I am alert, safe and sound, wealthy, pain-free, emotionally clear, XYZ pounds, and I am selling more everyday by making everyone around me happier. Happiness is my path!”

Doubtful? Skeptical? Don’t be! It works! I have many hundreds of examples to prove it. Try it! What’s the worst could happen? You’ll be less miserable? HA! Start today and sell more tomorrow! (and it’s FREE!)

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

 “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals. God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Goals Schmoles!

No Problem? No Goal.

     If you can’t define your problem, clearly, in writing, in one sentence, you don’t have a goal. Early on in my career, I had one of those experiences that leave neophytes like I was at that time reeling in anguish and boredom, only to learn eventually that I had been a witness to business management greatness.

     I was working for the world’s number one Madison Avenue advertising agency and I was a “creative management team member” assigned to handle the marketing for a Fortune 500 company, one of the planet’s greatest airlines. The boredom set in after being locked (literally) in a fancy Manhattan hotel suite with the six top executives of the airline and the top creative and management team members of the ad agency for four 12-hour workdays and four 3-4 hour worknights, where we ate, drank and slept the airline business.

     The purpose of the marathon session was “to define the problem” that the airline had that we could wrap a major marketing campaign around. The airline chief required that we sort through reports from every department in every worldwide division and review all the problems, from late baggage delivery to delayed flights to food service complaints to air traffic control issues, and on and on.

     It was so much more than I ever wanted to know, and all I could think about was getting home to my family, and eating something besides subs and pizza. But guess what? The problem got defined. The boss insisted that it be written down as a single sentence and that everyone in the room had to accept the wording exactly. I probably don’t need to tell you I thought he was nuts, and that I was seriously thinking about tuning up my resume.

     The end result was that the problem got flipped over into a goal statement that was specific, flexible, realistic and had a due date. We all left exhausted. We worked with the goal statement. We achieved the goal with what turned out to be one of the most productive advertising and sales campaigns in history. In other words the torture produced.

     I’ve repeated the dynamics hundreds of times since over the years. It always works! Always. Define the problem. Be specific and put it in writing and get all involved to agree at least somewhat with the statement. Then rework the statement into a goal and go for it. Crazy extra nonsense work. Crazy? Maybe. Extra? Positively. Nonsense? I don’t think so anymore. Work? Yes it’s very hard work. But it also DOES work. And that makes it about as close to a sure bet as you’ll ever get in business! 

 Good Night and God Bless You!  halalpiar     

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Yes, you do need

to love your spouse!

     When you think your business is buckling under from economic strains and from government’s abject failure to provide meaningful job creation incentives for small business, there are still steps you can take now to get your business back on top. Yes, steps you can take, not HOPE. HOPE is not the answer. ACTION is the answer.

     What does it take? You need simply to get your head up out of the sand and turn around. Look at the other businesses around you…in the same building, on the same block, in the same town. in the same county, in the same state, in a neighboring state, or even in another country. Find businesses that are compatible with yours, whose services or products are complementary to yours.

     Accountants and bookkeeping services, computer hardware and software services, animal and produce farming, office supplies and office furniture, painters and sculptures, publications and Internet marketers, ad agencies and photographers, furniture and bedding companies, candy stores and dentists (just kidding there; wanted to make sure you’re still reading BECAUSE striking up strategic alliances with other businesses offers opportunities you don’t have now by yourself!)

     With another complementary business, you may be able to share marketing costs (even utilities if you’re in the same building), public relations impact (with joint news releases and co-sponsored events), customer service (by offering an extended array of products or services), databases (shared email addresses for promotional emails, for example), even staff (centralized reception or sales reps that may be too costly for one business to carry alone. And so it goes, on and on.

     The point is that the opportunities are only limited by your thinking and your attitude. If you think it’s better to go down with your ship than to step back to a co-captain position with part of your business, help yourself. The thing that’s important to remember is that strategic alliances are strategic alliances because they are not formal legal entities. They are simply ways of working together that have mutual benefits.

     Oh, and yes, you do need to love your spouse, but you need not love a strategic partner. You need only to have two businesses that recognize there’s strength in numbers that just does not exist for either business functioning independently. What have you got to lose by talking and trying? You might even come up with a situation that lifts both businesses off the map! You never know ’til you try. Nothing happens ’til you act!

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Hal@Businessworks.US     302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Bite-The-Apple Time!

     An Amazon 5-star selection book that I wrote (DOCTOR BUSINESS…How To Boost Your Practice And Build Long-Term Relationships, for physicians) presents an example of a dentist who was running an expensive series of totally ineffective newspaper sports section ads headlined: “Yes, now we have mucosal blade inserts!” (Well, at least he used the magic number of seven words you always hear me harp on!)

     When I asked him about the message, he explained that the mucosal blade inserts were mushroom-shaped devices that he surgically implanted in the jaw to anchor dentures more securely than with the use of adhesives. He said patients would have much stronger use of their teeth.

     I redirected his ad into a major senior citizen news publication (at a much lower rate than he had been paying), and revised his ad to say, “Now you can bite an apple again!” My seven words outperformed his seven words by an astronomical amount. In fact, his phones wouldn’t stop ringing. Denture-wearers were lining up to be evaluated for the procedure.

     So, yes, choosing the right audience and the right vehicle to reach that audience is half the battle, so to speak, and simplifying the message to sell the benefit is the other half.

     What are your sales messages saying right now? Are they focused on product features or customer benefits? Are they running in inappropriate print environments or inappropriate broadcast environments? Are you making the best possible use of the Internet? Website(s)? Links? Blog(s)? Emails? Webinars? Podcasts? Social networks? Business networks?

     Did you know that most of these suggested Internet vehicles can be free, and can actually have more impact than pricey traditional advertising approaches? If you’re not at least actively exploring these options, you either have very deep pockets, an influential relative in traditional media sales, no budget, or (hopefully not) you’re invested in growing yourself a reputation for reckless spending!

     If you are exploring all this, but having trouble with the confusion crunch, or with sorting out the high-priced smoke and mirror SEO specialists from the outdated email database suppliers, who are looking to rent you their email lists that include prisoners, newly-born infants and 27,000 dead people… or you’re simply not sure that your message is the best it can be… send me an email Hal@TheWriterWorks.com with “Confusion Crunch” in the subject line. I’ll respond promptly.   

Good Night and God Bless You!  halalpiar     

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Here, Mr. President:

Take this and run with it!

     Okay, all you government and big-business corporate executives, take this! Everyone except you guys knows that small business is the lifeblood of America, and that small business is the single greatest and most important creator of jobs. For now, we’ll forget about why you don’t know this, and just move forward.

     Here is what we need to straighten out the crooked economic path that you folks all contributed to and nurtured and reinforced. We need to present every American small business (1-20 employees) with a choice of 5 stimulus options. Before you laugh up your respective sleeves, re-read the first paragraph.

Here’s the select-one-only choice that needs to be offered:

1) You choose OPTION A and receive an outright, no-strings-attached grant from the government for $5,000 to be used against pay off of bills over 60 days old from the date of application. I shouldn’t need to spell out all the resultant benefits; just think about it for 30 seconds!  OR…

2) You choose OPTION B and receive a $15,000 payment for $15,000 retail value worth of your products or services, which you deliver to any government agency you choose that can use what you sell, or any charity of your choice if no government agency can use your products or services. Surely you need not think about what this would accomplish.  OR…

3) You choose OPTION C and receive $30,000 in two $15,000 payments, six months apart for creating one new parttime (20-hours/week) job with no benefits, and—using pre-determined criteria—prove the job’s existence and value after twelve months.  OR…

4) You choose OPTION D and receive $70,000 in six equal payments for creating one new fulltime (40-hours/week) job with benefits PLUS one new parttime (20-hours/week) job with no benefits, and—using pre-determined criteria—prove the existence and value of both jobs after twelve months.  OR…

5) You choose NONE of the above, and receive a $10,000 tax credit.

     Oh, but how would this ever be administered? Use the Energy Department which performs next to zero value services at any measurable level. They have enough personnel to oversee and monitor such a program. 

     You don’t like the details of this proposal? Then change them. Do anything you want with them, but do SOMEthing with them. Show small business the respect small business deserves!                                                                                                          

Here, Mr. President,

is the bottom line:

     You want to reverse the economy? You want people to be happier and healthier? You want to see new jobs created? Then stop asking other government employees with no business experience and corporate executives with no realistic sense of business operations how to do it.

(These people are corporate management operations experts; corporate management operations has nothing to do with the kinds of day-to-day small business activities that made this country great and that hold the key to today’s present need for economic recovery!)

     These people haven’t a clue. Their ideas are lethargic and unrealistic, and just plain won’t work because they don’t understand the down-to-earth dynamics of how to dig out of a hole. It takes a shovel and an I-can-do-it attitude.

     In our country, the only people with these tools are entrepreneurs and small business owners. Give them shovels (the 5 options above) and they will dig! All the corporate and government resources in the world will not get down in the trenches and get the job done.

Why? Because you cannot dig out of a hole while sitting

in a tower or the backseat of a limo or private jet.

     We are past the point of pretending. Politics aside for just one minute, if that’s possible, why is it that the people most capable of turning things around are not being given meaningful opportunities to do exactly that?

     If you, Mr. President, are willing to take what is a more-than-reasonable risk and charge small business with the solution, you will be astonished at how many of us will rise to the occasion and get the job done. I hope only that this thinking makes it to your doorstep while there’s still time to act on it.  

Good Night and God Bless You!  halalpiar     

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When the chips are down,

entrepreneurs switch to pretzels

     When a consumer product manufacturer or service provider needs to dig up more business–even in such a mainstream media created economic vacuum as we’re presently being sucked deeper and deeper into– there are literally endless resources spelling out a myriad of strategic avenues and approaches…not to mention equally endless tactical options, methods, and techniques.

     But let’s say you have a B2B business. You provide services to the product manufacturers and service providers. Maybe you’re a customer service training organization or a building custodial service or a website design and maintenance business. Where do you go?

     The big guys are choking. They’ve wiped out training budgets, they’re cutting back building cleaning frequency, and they’re making do with their internal IT people to keep their websites functionable.

     How do you get these corporate giants to stand still long enough to consider adding or extending your services when they are in this budget-slashing frame of mind? How do you tell a company that’s laying off employees that they need customer service training now more than ever because the best source of business is existing and past business, and they’d better step up those relationships? 

     The big product and service guyscan make it nearly impossible for the little B2B guys to survive. Ah, but that’s where entrepreneurial spirit rises to the top. When the chips are down, entrepreneurs switch to pretzels. And guess what? Entrepreneurial hi-tech-anchored businesses are not only breaking the communications barrier, they are pulling entire legions of small B2B businesses along with them…not very unlike the makings of the industrial revolution.

     So once again, it is small business to the rescue, even as big business is being rewarded with government trillions for having screwed up the marketplace beyond recognition, and then for having sidestepped the wiser path of bankruptcy

…wiser because it would have forced more efficient operations and more effective products and services

…wiser because it would have spared us all ten more years’ worth of beating our collective brains in, to raise the taxes and repay the debts that are being used now to feather union beds in return for their political support. 

     What a sad and sick commentary on society that we’ve come to this. How fortunate we all are that the entrepreneurial spirit does still live, and will ultimately bring us a return to respectability, assuming the White House doesn’t continue paying off political promises with our hard-earned tax dollars. But it’s what we must all want. We elected zero business experience.

Good Night and God Bless You!  

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As communication continues

to experience convulsively

explosive change, so do the

methodologies we use to sell.

     Playwrite Arthur Miller clearly had something else in mind at the time he wrote and titled his classic Death of a Salesman, but there could never be a more apropos expression for what’s happening today, right this very minute, that is about to forever extinguish the “sales process” as we have known it since the day anyone reading this was born. 

     What, for example, does it suggest to you that even as recent as a year ago, effective sales communication was commonly reported to consist of as much as 87% nonverbal ingredients–gestures, posture, tone of voice, appearance, eye contact, active listening, etc.– and today major companies are talking about the sales process in terms of “digital body language”?

     Except for those salespeople who haven’t caught up (or, on) yet (and you surely know who they are and where they breed), business is at the crossroads of revolutionary change, and savvy salespeople spurred on by the blinding speed of technological advances are quick on the heels of entrepreneurs worldwide in leading the way.

     With entrepreneurial base-camp entrenchments established, salespeople will be muscling their way up the mountainside and serving the rest of society and the business world as the catalysts of change who will ultimately shake our depressed economy back into place. But this will only happen if those engaged in sales careers are able to fully grasp the dynamics of what’s going on around them.

     Entrepreneurs are spirited innovators who start enterprises, and who find the fuel and who get the engines fired up, and who get that initial forward thrust to happen (which is probably the most monumentally difficult and underrated task in all of business), but it is the world’s salespeople who who are responsible for revenues and growth and profits more than any other entity.

     Ah, but therein lies the potential problem. Salespeople who don’t see what’s happening, who don’t jump at the chance to instantly and dramatically shift into higher gear, who think they can keep doing the same old things in the same old ways, will fall by the wayside and die. And there won’t be any mercy rules!

The bottom line for salespeople:

• You must adjust your mindset to become more of a marketer and less of a sales representative.
• You must provide prospects/customers with new buying process experiences that are anchored by product/service/idea and market knowledge.

         You must rely more heavily on proving performance with demonstration and testing and sampling.

• You must increase your focus on benefits and ways of integrating purchases with existing products/services/ideas.
• You must spend more energy sitting on the same side of the prospect/customer’s problem-solving table and working as a partner instead of as a representative.

HIGH TRUST/credibility, proven performance and database marketing are now the three kings of sales! Are you making it happen, or is it happening to you? 

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Good Night and God Bless You! 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!    

 Networking Is Selling.

Belt-tightening times require business, organization and professional practice people to get more done with less. But you already know that. Let’s zero in on something you don’t know (or have thus far chosen to not admit by owning up to the fact that…

No matter what your job is–whether you work with a church, a healthcare facility, a bank, the government, an educational or nonprofit institution, a trucking company, a restaurant, professional sports team, senior housing development–no matter WHAT your job is: YOU ARE IN SALES!

Got that? Okay. Next:

The secret of sales, marketing, advertising and public relations news releases and events is embodied in the acronym AIDAS, which stands for attract ATTENTION, create INTEREST, stimulate DESIRE, bring about ACTION and ensure SATISFACTION. 

[Hey, you’re doing fine out there, all you doctors and plumbers and camp directors and computer techies, chicken pluckers and grocery store checkers. Stay with this another minute.]

In years past, traditional salespeople who are out selling for a living have usually had the luxury of field houses full of expensive support tools and programs designed to drive prospects to their feet. You’ll find these eyeball-to-eyeball presenters hovering about abundantly in retail settings and trade and professional shows.

You’ll also find that these same folks are discovering with almost the same swiftness and embarrassed sense of loss one might experience with suddenly having his or her pants pulled down, that businesses and organizations are now and have been rapidly withdrawing budget support for advertising,  promotion and merchandising.

Therefore (Aha!) ingenuity must rise for salespeople to survive. And where do they turn? To networking of course, to the very most commonly understood and used sales promotional vehicle that all the non-salespeople have been using to sell themselves and their services and ideas for centuries . . .

Networking. Networking is a fancy term for meeting and greeting and staying in touch and asking for referrals. But guess what? If you don’t apply the AIDAS acronym to your networking efforts, even as a floor sweeper, you’re not likely to survive the mainstream media’s economic rumor mongering that’s sucking the life out of our families, friends, neighbors, and communities.

     So, before you go on stage each day, clean up your act, pull back your shoulders, take a deep breath, tell your mirror image that you are the greatest performer in the job that you do, that ever lived, and that you are going to sail through the day making good things happen at every turn.

     Then recite to yourself that you will attract ATTENTION, create INTEREST, stimulate DESIRE, bring about ACTION, and ensure SATISFACTION with every task and every person you encounter. Do that and you’ve got my 100% money-back guarantee (oh, right, this was all free!) that you will astound yourself. You WILL astound yourself! And that’s a good thing. 

                                             

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Hal@Businessworks.US

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals. God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!