Enter your title

Stay on Target!

One of the most difficult things to do throughout the day is to stay focused on the tasks that need to be accomplished! As difficult as it is, most successful people manage to do it!

Successfully managing your day all ties into one thing . . . how you start your day. If you come into the office sit down without a plan and just start firing away at everything you think you need to do, you are bound to mess up!

A good way to start your day is to begin with a 15 to 20 minute quite time and plan your day. Lock your door and put the phone on "out of office". Do not allow yourself to be disturbed.

Review messages in your inbox, listen to voice mail and examine your list from yesterday. What list from yesterday? The list you are about to make for today . . . the list you would have made yesterday had you read this article then.
That’s right, make an action list. Write down what you need to accomplish, what you want to accomplish, and what others want you to accomplish. Use a system of your own, you can:

• Scribble notes on sticky notes
• Enter the list onto your PalmPilot, Multi-gadget phone, or other personal management device 
• Write it on the palm of your hand . . . what-ever works!
   

Now that you have the list of everything you need to do, you are probably aware that you can not do that much work in a single day. It is time to prioritize the list. One two three, A B C, or color coded; it really doesn't matter how you mark each item. The key is to decide what needs to be done in what order and mark it.

Keep your list handy and refer to it often throughout the day. Mark off the items you have accomplished . . . it is a big motivator to see how much progress you have made.

Don't allow yourself to work on items that are not on the list. Of course, emergencies will crop up that you will need to add to the list, and prioritize them right at the top.

By the end of the day you will be able to review your list and see just how much you actually accomplished. If you followed your priorities you will also notice that you have taken care of the most important things.

Another good day wrapped up! And all because you started yourself off on the right foot!

back to top

Tip of the Month

When speaking with a customer or prospect on the phone or face-to-face, you have very little time to connect!  Starting a conversation is critical, handled incorrectly you will find you haven't connected at all!

Remember to keep it about them and their needs. Don't smile, say hello and start babbling about your products or services . . . they will tune you out.

Instead, politely greet them and start off with a comment like:

• Mr. Big, if you are like other companies in ABC Industry, I suspect you are experiencing (insert a problem your product solves here).
• Mr. Big, many of our clients are having issues with (insert problem you can solve). How does this compare to your companies experience?

Sounds simple, but it can be difficult to keep yourself from falling back on some bad tactics in starting a conversation. Here are some to avoid:

• Start off the conversation with, "Hi, how are you?"
• Introducing yourself with an explanation of who you are, who your company is and what you do.
• Small talk . . . talking about the weather, stuff in the office, etc.
• Listing companies you have done work for
• Shove a brochure in their face and start a sales pitch

There are much more appropriate times for many of the items in the list above . . . definitely not during your introduction though!

back to top

Success Stories

A client began to notice that they had one particular customer of theirs that email would not deliver to. They had no issues delivering email messages to anyone else . . . just this one customer.

Since we host their website and email accounts, they asked us to look into the issue. We checked out the error messages, and verified that our servers were not at fault. We were able to track the issue to the internet service provider for their customer that was unable to receive messages.

We instructed them to have their clients contact the internet service provider in question and ask them to correct the issue. The provider was incredibly difficult to get a hold of and when they finally did get a hold of them, they adamantly denied any responsibility for the issue.

Our clients grew increasingly frustrated in the lack of cooperation being provided by their customers internet service provider. To help them re-establish email with their customer we set up a work around using redirects and a fictitious email address using our own domain name. This allowed them to send emails in a rather round-about manner.

We contacted the uncooperative internet service provider directly, upon our clients request, and worked diligently to help them find the issue. Their continued attitude was that it was someone else's fault and we need to look somewhere else for a resolution.

Over a period of a few months, we traced failed delivery attempts through several hosting providers and internet access providers in the loop and every time the problem pointed to  the customer's internet provider . . . they continued to deny it.

Although it was well beyond our responsibility at this point, we continued to work for a resolution. We continued to chase our tails for the benefit of our client, they really needed to be able to send emails to their customer.

Finally the provider denying responsibility stopped hosting email accounts and sub-contracted with a much larger 3rd party email hosting company to handle their accounts. The problem immediately ended . . . hmm!  Where was the issue again?

I like to think it was our relentless persuit that convinced them they needed to do something to fix a broken system.

back to top