We were talking about the power of one’s mind, more specifically about ones sales mindset. Eugene was relaying an exchange he had many years ago when he was a pharmaceutical sales rep. He was comparing notes with another rep that was having difficulty getting in to see physicians to promote their company’s product. He wanted to know why Eugene was having so much success, and he was not.

Turns out, this other sales rep found it extremely difficult to turn the doorknob to enter the doctor’s office. He had such high self-doubt, Eugene explained, that he had lost the sale before he even initiated the call. This is when Eugene summed things up by commenting, “You are finished before you start!”

This simple statement may apply to those suffering with weak sales results. Appreciate sales is not for everyone. Being in the sales profession requires intelligence, personality, perseverance and a strong believe in ones self and belief in ones customer.

When you think about it, your objective is to help your prospect make an informed purchasing decision (or not) based on the knowledge you bring to the table. Most successful sales people are advocates for their prospects, doing what is in the client’s best interest. This typically evolves into a meaningful relationship based on mutual trust and understanding. Those that rise to the top in the sales profession also tend to have a high belief in self.

How is your belief in self? Do you experience self-doubt to the point you have trouble dialling that cold call, or making that initial visit to your prospect’s office?

This is more common in sales than we think, not just for those new to the business, it can affect experienced sales people who have fallen into the infamous “rut”. How we think and how we see our self causes this “affliction”.

How we see ourselves in our minds eye determines our belief in self. The subconscious mind is incredibly powerful. Research by psychologists Dr. Henry Murray, Dr. David McClelland, and Dr. Clayton Lafferty has determined our actions are a result of what we think.

The challenge is to recognize when one is not thinking positively about their capabilities and then develop strategies to counteract this thought process. Here are some tips you can use:

1. Remind yourself of your previous successes
2. Focus on your current strengths and future potential
3. Visualize yourself being successful several times a day
4. Record a positive belief statement you can repeat 5 times a day
5. Set and achieve realistic goals (start small), then stretch them
6. Celebrate successes along the way

In the classic book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, he makes the case it is scientifically impossible to conceive an idea in your mind, to believe you can do it, and then not be able to. The fact we can conceive something in our mind and believe we can do it, means we can.

Don’t be finished before you start. Your sales mindset needs to be the “hidden partner” that allows you to not only succeed in sales, but to thrive.

Are you finished before you start? is a post from: Visit Glen Ridge Business Site

However, effective communications is more than just managing issues through the media. Companies and organizations must also be aware of their external publics the people and groups outside of an organization’s sphere that affect, or are affected by, what that organization does.

This is known as ‘Relationship Management.’ It is the discipline of identifying key publics and establishing strategies for building and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships with those publics.

Identifying External Publics

Like most organizations, there is a good chance you are already using media monitoring to track the issues that affect your organization. This is Communications 101.

You may even be taking it one step further and conducting some kind of media analysis, including assigning tones like positive, negative or neutral to news stories. And if you’re not, you should be. Without proper analysis and evaluation, your communications team is not doing its job properly.

But where it really gets interesting is when you take your existing monitoring and analysis and add another dimension to it. One of the best examples of this is tracking and analyzing quotes.

Tracking quotes helps you identify your key publics. You can see exactly what they are thinking, what they are saying, what they are doing.

And by taking further small steps, such as cross-referencing tone with quotes, you can easily identify the type of relationship that exists between your organization and its different key publics. You can get a picture of what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong, and, where necessary, develop a plan to change the relationship.

Obviously, the more positive the quote or article, the greater the chance that the person being quoted is an ally to issues favorable to your organization. Conversely, the more negative the quote or article, the greater the chance that the person being quoted is opposed to issues favorable to your organization.

Furthermore, the more times a person is quoted, the greater the chance he or she is an Opinion Leader a person that knowingly or unknowingly influences opinion. It’s important that your organization try to have an open and professional dialogue with Opinion Leaders no matter what their position is.

Dealing with Key Publics

A lot of people feel the media ultimately control public opinion. There’s no denying they do have an enormous influence, but they are only one piece of the PR puzzle.

It’s important that PR professionals not limit themselves to just the media. Sometimes it’s best to communicate right to the source, if possible. Remember, as a professional communicator, your primary job is to disseminate information, not necessarily to deal with the media or write news releases. How you get the information to your publics is not what matters; what matters is that they get the information. Using the media and writing news releases are simply a means to an end.

According to Statistics Canada, 61 per cent of Canadians belong to a group or organization, including organizations unions, religious groups, professional associations, etc. Opinion Leaders are a very important component of these groups.

Once you have identified the groups and their Opinion Leaders, it’s important to develop consistent messages that will clearly state your organization’s position on key issues. Without that consistency, you run the risk of looking hypocritical or insincere. The last thing you want is to be communicating different messages regarding the same issue.

If you want people to trust you and your organization, consistency is a must. Trust is the first step in developing a relationship with the Opinion Leaders and your key publics.

Honesty is Always the Best Policy

Remember, when it comes to any type of communications, honesty is always the best policy. Trying to manipulate the media or the public is a dangerous game. If you’re honest, people might not always like what you have to say, but at least they’ll believe you and have a greater respect for you in the long run.

Monitoring the Media Helps Ensure Honesty Prevails

Monitoring the media allows organizations to ensure everyone is on message, helping to prevent misunderstandings through inadvertent contradictions or an overly aggressive spokesperson. Also, proactive media analysis can gauge how well key publics and other influencers, such as the media, are accepting your organization’s position on an issue.

Media Analysis is a Powerful Tool, but…

Media analysis can help identify miscommunication, and can also help identify the underlying reason for that miscommunication. It’s also an effective way of identifying key publics and opinion leaders, gauging where they stand on an issue and finding out what they are saying.

However, it’s important to remember Relationship Management’ is about dealing with people directly. Media analysis is just a tool to help ensure your organization is communicating honestly and effectively the same way the media are just a vehicle for delivering your message.

But even if you have a top notch media analysis program in place, you should never stop communicating directly with your key publics to figure out where they stand on key issues and how they view your organization. After all, public relations and communications are all about communicating effectively, and nothing is more effective than getting your information straight from the source.

Relationship Management: Knowing and Communicating with Your Key Publics is a post from: Visit Glen Ridge Business Site

- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene i (58-90)

Hamlet may not have been talking about network marketing, but his words do apply. Almost every network marketer has experienced the slings and arrows of the naysayers, those often well-meaning friends and relatives that stand in the way of our making an outrageous fortune! Experienced network marketers, clothed in the armor of past success, are less vulnerable to outside influences. The new distributor, however, is vulnerable, and that sea of troubles can act as a barrier to reaching their true potential.

What did the knights of old do to prevent an injury? Thats right they armed themselves. Their armor was heavy and cumbersome, and they needed a squire to help them prepare for battle. Well, the same is true for your new distributors. While the armor they must use is less cumbersome than that of the knights, you must help them arm themselves for success. In other words, you must be their squire.

What do I mean by arming for success?

When a new distributor joins your network marketing organization, they are moving into an environment that demands strong armor. There are a lot of slings and arrows that can hurt their chances for success and create a sea of troubles — of doubt, disbelief, even failure.

As Rich Dad, Poor Dad author Robert T. Kiyosaki points out, most people in this world are afraid to experience success. They are held back by negative thinking, and consequently suffer the pain of mediocrity. Because they have not been armed for success, and are more focused on security and survival, they subject themselves to a life of servitude and poverty and being someone elses employee.

Arm your new distributors from negative thinking and potential disaster. How? By understanding why so many people are negative about network marketing and the prospects of the success it can bring.

Lets face it. There are a lot of people out there that do not want you to become successful. When you are successful, you point out the lack of success in their lives. When you take away any excuses theyve been hanging onto and you force them to look at their lives as they really are, it makes them very uncomfortable. Youve heard of the expression Misery loves company. Well, its true.

Doug Firebaugh, network marketing guru, calls it the “Unspoken Understanding,” which is simply the silent agreement that most people have with each other, namely don’t mention my mediocre life, and I won’t mention yours. Your success and the success of your new distributors, just points out the naysayers mediocrity.

Leaders help others. If you are going to be successful in network marketing, you must arm your new distributors against people who will try to convince them their business won’t work. Show your downline you want them to be successful. Encourage them. Show them how the most successful network marketers have achieved their success, and teach them to model those attitudes, habits, and actions. Remind your distributors that they are the CEO of their lives. Arm them with the power of positive thinking so they dont let others live their lives for them with their negative attitudes.

To paraphrase Hamlet, by opposing negative thoughts, we end them.

Bruce Bailey, Ph.D.

Network Marketing Training — Arm Your New Distributors for Success is a post from: Visit Glen Ridge Business Site

1) You can continually write your own materials…and you should.

2) You can record your thoughts and get them transcribed… and you should.

3) You can hire a ghostwriter to write materials for you… and you should.

or

4) You can purchase the rights to content that you can resell… and you should do this as well.

Each option has its own positives and negatives but in my opinion you should be doing a little bit of each.

Let me explain…

1) You can continually write your own materials

Writing you own original content is important because you don’t want to become dependant on other people’s thoughts. You want to train yourself to consistently think original thoughts and then capture them. People want fresh thinking. They don’t want the same old, same old.

Setting aside regular periods to work on original content is a GREAT habit to form because over a period of time youll have the necessary ingredients to continually crank out new products for your market.

Just recently I started gathering all of the content that we have developed over the years. We had a MASSIVE advantage when it came to creating new products because he has been diligently working on creating new materials each and every year.

When you have raw content you can always create new things from it. Being disciplined to plan out time and record your thoughts is a FANTASTIC habit to master and can instantly serve you today and well into the future.

2) You can record your thoughts and get them transcribed

This falls under the same category of capturing your own original thoughts but it has one major advantage… it’s a lot easier to do.

Most people forget that the transcripts are a valuable resource in product development. Your audience will have all kinds of different learning preferences. By providing the transcripts you are actually doing your clients a great service and as a result the transcripts instantly increase the value of your package.

If you enjoyed this article make sure to look up the other two articles in the series coming soon dealing with the other 3 methods of creating content: Part 2 – Hiring a ghostwriter and Part 3 – Purchasing The Rights Of Content You Can Resell!

4 Methods To Master The #1 Success Secret Of Infopreneuring (1 of 3) is a post from: Visit Glen Ridge Business Site

In order to minimize this confusion, the items below will give you a general idea of what Performance Management is all about as well as the activities that are involved in this process.

What is Performance Management?

Performance management is a process that provides both the manager and the employee (the person being supervised) the chance to determine the shared goals that relates to the overall goals of the company by looking into employee performance.

Why is it important?

Performance Management establishes an outline for employees and their performance managers to assess and to come to an agreement on certain concerns and aims that are in accordance with the overall structure of the company. This enables both parties to have clear objectives that would help them in their work and in their professional growth.

Who conducts Performance Management?

Performance Management is carried out by those who oversee the performance of other people work/team leaders, supervisors, managers, directors, or department chairs.

What are the processes involved?

Below are the phases of the Performance Management process:

1. Planning

This phase of Performance Management process includes establishing job descriptions and identifying the employees essential functions as well as defining the strategic plan/s of the department or the company as a whole.

Job Description

A job description is used to advertise a vacant position, which typically specifies the following:

- The specific functions, tasks, and responsibilities of the position
- The amount of time needed to act upon each function
- The qualifications needed (skills, knowledge and abilities) to perform the job
- The physical and mental requirements of the position
- Salary range for the position
- To whom the position reports

Job descriptions should be disclosed to the employee as soon as he or she is hired. Note, however, that job descriptions are listed using words that make it difficult to measure the employees performance. They are in contrast with competencies, which list the skills needed in performing such tasks and are described using terms that can be measured.

Strategic Plan

In effect, a strategic plan tells you three things:

- Where the company is heading in the coming year/s.
- How the company is going to get there.
- How the company will know if it is already there or not.

Included in a strategic plan are the following:

Mission statement the primary reason why your department (or company) exists.

Goals associated with the mission statement, they determine the results that will advance said statement/s.

Strategic initiatives specifies definite steps that must be taken to accomplish each goal. It is a dynamic process, usually examined during periods such as one or two years.

2. Developing

This phase of Performance Management process includes developing performance standards, which offers a scale that describes how a specific job should be performed in order to meet (or exceed) expectations. They are explained to newly hired employees and are later used to evaluate work performance.

Performance standards are generally outlined with the help of the employees who actually perform the tasks or functions. There are a number of advantages with this approach:

- The standards will be suitable to the requirements of the job
- The standards will be applicable to actual work conditions
- The standards will be easily understood by the employee (and performance manager as well)
- The standards will be acknowledged (and received) by the employee and the performance manager

Standards of performance are usually in the form of ratings (1 to 5, A to E) that are used by performance managers to rate the employees actual level of performance.

3. Monitoring

This phase of the Performance Management process includes monitoring employees work performances and giving feedback about them.

As the basis of feedback, observations should be verifiable: they should involve noticeable and work-related facts, events, behaviors, actions, statements, and results. Feedback of this type is called behavioral feedback, and they help employees improve and/or sustain good performance by precisely identifying the areas that the employee needs to improve without judging his or her character or motives.

4. Rating

This phase includes conducting performance evaluations. This is the critical aspect of the Performance Management process, especially because it is important for performance managers to arrive at an unbiased assessment.

A performance appraisal form has the following features:

- Employee information
- Performance standards
- Rating scale
- Signatures
- Employee performance development recommendations
- Employee comments
- Employees Self-appraisal

Why conduct performance appraisals? It provides an opportunity to improve performance in the future not only for employees, but for managers as well. Performance appraisals enable managers to acquire information from employees that will help them make employee’s jobs more productive.

5. Development Planning

This phase of the Performance Management process includes establishing plans for improved employee performance and development goals. This advances the overall goal of the company and at the same time increases the quality of work by employees by:

- Encouraging constant learning and professional growth.
- Helping employees maintain the level of performance that meets (and exceeds) expectations.
- Improving job – or career-related skills and experience.

In closing, Performance Management is a process that, when executed fairly and effectively, can improve the quality of the companys workforce, raise standards, increase job satisfaction, and develop professionalism and expertise that would benefit not only the employees but the entire organization as well.

A Guide To Performance Management is a post from: Visit Glen Ridge Business Site

10 REAL AdSense Secrets is a post from: Visit Glen Ridge Business Site

We deal with our clients for a short amount of time, but the lender is in constant communication with them for years. And whenever your customers are asked who their mortgage company is, they will usually answer the name of their lender.

Some lenders are better at stealing our clients then others.

As a real estate investor I have had loans with several different lenders. One of my properties had a loan from a lender called JB Nutter. This was a small bank that did a very poor job of marketing itself to its customers. I would hear from them 3 times a year. Once to send me a coupon book for the year, another to tell me how much interest I paid that year for my taxes, and another to tell me about how much money was in my escrow account.

They never once tried to offer me a refinance.

My current mortgage for my residence is with Countrywide. These guys know their stuff. They mail me a statement every month. And in every statement is an offer to refinance or get a line of credit, or insurance. They are always politely selling something. And if that weren’t enough, they mail me every couple months or so more offers to refinance or tap some equity. But at least they are not as sneaky as World Savings Bank.

One of my investment properties had one of their loans. They now have hooked up with the credit bureaus so that whenever someone with one of their loans gets their credit checked by a mortgage company or lender, they get notified. I like getting my credit checked every 3 months, and with my own mortgage company all it takes is a couple keystrokes of my computer. Imagine my surprise when I got a call at home from a World Savings rep asking me if I was thinking about refinancing. He told me he knew I had my credit checked by a mortgage company and that they were ready to give me a better offer then whatever I was getting,

They have a whole division of telemarketers who do nothing but call their loan holders who are getting their credit checked by other mortgage companies. So even if you get a client a World Savings loan, and that client comes back to you later for a refi, you are now going to have to compete with World Savings for this customer.

Pisses you off doesn’t it?

And you can bet that now that one lender is doing this, others will follow suit,.

So what do we as mortgage brokers do about this?

Simple, we form close relationships with our clients, that basically makes them immune to any sales pitch by any other lender or mortgage company. I call it the “silent force field”. We need to use every tool at our disposal to make sure that once a person becomes a client we never let them go.

I outline the “silent force field’ completely in our Referrals on Demand product, but I will lay out some guidelines for you here.

1. You must stay in contact with them on a regular basis. Once a month minimum The easiest way to do this is through a monthly newsletter. Outsource this to a newsletter company and they will handle the production, printing, and mailing of the newsletter to your clients every month.

2. WOW your clients as soon as you can. Come up with a creative way to make a great impression on your clients. Here’s an example. There is dentist in Australia who was tired of having customers be afraid to see him. So he completely changed his office. Now instead of a regular dentist office, it looks more like someone’s living room. There is the aroma of fresh baked cinnamon buns in the air, (sugar free) that can be enjoyed with coffee or tea. There is no receptionist sitting there with the little window that they keep closing on you. This dentist now has a referral only practice, where the only way to work with him, is if you know someone who already works with him, and they give you a referral.

3. Get to know your clients and let them get to know you. Show your personality. Let them know about your family. Keep them informed about how your kids are doing in school. Remember, you do not want to seem like their bank. You want to seem like a family friend that happens to do mortgages. Have customer appreciation parties. Have house warming parties. Have a grand birthday party for yourself every year. Give yourself excuses to call your clients and get to know them socially.

4. Start a blog and write about whatever you want. Invite your clients to visit often and provide feedback.

5. Become a customer of your clients. If one of your clients owns a dry cleaners, get your clothes cleaned there. Reward them for doing business with you by doing business with them.

6. Get your clients to network amongst themselves. Create a referral club. Your dry cleaner client can go to your dentist client when his teeth hurt. And if you make the referral you look even better.

These are just a few ideas to help you keep your customers. People do business with people they like. By forming relationships with your past clients you can make sure they keep coming back to you.

Your lenders are spying on your clients is a post from: Visit Glen Ridge Business Site

If your spouse or significant other is against your business, then you are missing a huge portion of the business support system you need to sustain yourself. Running a small business is a family affair. Whether your family thinks they are involved or not, they are. They truly are the largest source of support your business will get.

Impact of Negativity

If your family is negative about your business then this influence will almost wipe out any other business support systems you have in place. Its going to be tough for the next couple of months while you get your business off the ground. A strong, positive, encouraging business support system will sustain you through the lows and temper you through the highs.

Negativity, on the other hand, will kill your business faster than anything else. If you are hearing all day that you’re no good, you’re business is crappy, you’re ruining your life, blah blah blah blah, you will go down a black hole with the rest of the business support systems you so carefully put in place.

The Bottom Line on Business Support Systems

You need to have positive business support systems and the main source of this support is your family. If your family is not going to be supportive then the circumstances are not optimal for your launch. Despite all the other business support systems you may have in place, your family trumps them all. Think seriously about where your family rates in your business support system and then decide if now is really the right time to start your business.

Copyright MMI-MMVI, Small Business Computer Consulting .com. All Worldwide Rights Reserved. {Attention Publishers: Live hyperlink in author resource box required for copyright compliance}

Business Support Systems – Your Family is Key is a post from: Visit Glen Ridge Business Site

Depending on your industry, you could command a price premium of 10-25% over the average provider. That may not sound like a lot, but it could spell the difference between eating hamburger or eating steak. I don’t know about you, but I would prefer eating steak!

Naturally, providing a high level of customer service means you will have to break a sweat. You may have to happily redo [its all in the attitude, baby!] or improve on an existing project in order to satisfy a good paying customer. This is what sets you apart from the pack.

If you are satisfied with the “status quo” then that’s okay too. Just don’t expect to have customers beat down your doors for work. At least the better customers will not!

Customer Service Done Right is a post from: Visit Glen Ridge Business Site

Growing numbers of medical transcriptionists will be needed to and identify discrepancies in medical reports, amend patients records, and edit documents from speech recognition systems . An increasing demand for standardized records should result in rapid employment growth in physicians offices, especially in large group practices. Medical transcriptionists held strong employment representation with about 105,000 jobs in 2004. About 4 out of 10 worked in hospitals and another 3 out of 10 worked in offices of physicians. Others worked for business support services; medical and diagnostic laboratories; outpatient care centers; and offices of physical, occupational and speech therapists, and audiologists.Compensation methods for medical transcriptionists vary. Some are paid based on the number of hours they work or on the number of lines they transcribe. The higher earners can forseeably expect more than $20 an hour.

Work conditions that some would envy are what many Medical Transcriptionist encounter. Professional transcriptionist can look forward to working in comfortable settings such as hospitals, physicians offices, transcription service offices, clinics, laboratories, medical libraries, government medical facilities, or their own homes. Many medical transcriptionists telecommute from home-based offices as employees or subcontractors for hospitals and transcription services or as self-employed, independent contractors.

Many medical transcriptionists work a standard 40-hour week. Self-employed medical transcriptionists are more likely to work irregular hoursincluding part time, evenings, weekends, or on call at any time. The future of medical transcriptionist jobs appear to be healthy and bright and shows no sign up declining anytime in the foreseeable future.

A Medical Transcriptionist Career Could Be Just What The Doctor Ordered is a post from: Visit Glen Ridge Business Site