May 2007 be the year of success for you!

Damon

There are a few sales professionals that really “get” the
power behind this priceless insight. Others completely miss
the significance or undervalue the power behind it.

Hopefully, you are the one who “gets” it and your
competitors are the ones to remain ignorant of this gem of
thought.

Those who know this shocking truth close lucrative
contracts by regularly conducting meetings with THE
decision makers. Those who don’t know this regularly
conduct meetings with low-level decision-makers.

What’s the difference between the two? Mindset. There are
those who believe they can and those who believe they can.
Both are right.

That thought, as valuable as gold, can be unearthed in the
telling of this story.

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Employers can be liable for secretly placing a video camera
in an employee’s office, even if the employer does not view
any of the video.  An employer must control his watchful
eye and use it in limited circumstances.

A California employer, who operates a residential facility
for abused children, placed a camera in an office to
determine who was accessing pornographic websites at night.
The camera was activated at all times in the office.  The
employer told a few employees about the camera, but not the
female employees occupying the office, because the employer
feared that these talkative employees may inform the
perpetrators.  While the camera was activated, a female
employee who occupied the office, on occasion, closed the
door, pulled down the shade to show her coworker how she
was recovering from child birth.  The employer was tagged
with invasion of the employees’ privacy.  It did not matter
if the employer viewed the videotapes or not.  The fact
that the employer had access to viewing was enough to
invade the employees’ invasion of privacy.  The employees
had an expectation of privacy that when the door to their
office was closed, images of them in the office would not
be transmitted.

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There are only a few days left in the year. So now is the
time to take those last minute tax savings.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV. So
do your due diligence and either check with your CPA, tax
planner, or the IRS site.

If you are a cash-basis taxpayer, as many sole proprietors
are, you claim expenses as they are paid. Likewise, you
claim revenue as you deposit it.

So take a quick look at your annual Profit and Loss
statement and decide: Do you need more revenue or more
expenses?

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Copyright (c) 2006 Transition Dynamics Enterprises, Inc.

You’ve been in your job for a few years. You get a decent
paycheck and your benefits are helpful. But you wonder if
something’s missing. You try to tell yourself you should be
happy you have such a good job, but some days you have to
face how unhappy you are at work.

Are you settling? Are you making do in a job that really
isn’t a very good fit for you?

Read this list of ten clues to determine how many of these
statements reflect how you feel about your work.

1) You get depressed every time you think of going back to
work after a weekend, a long weekend, or a vacation.

The closer Monday morning gets, the more a sense of dread
comes over you. You feel a pit in your stomach that you
can’t ignore. You wish there was something, anything, you
could do to avoid going to work.

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Tom had this problem of getting up late in the morning and was always late for work. His boss was mad at him and threatened to fire him if he didn’t do something about it. So Tom went to his doctor who gave him a pill and told him to take it before he went to bed. Tom slept well and in fact beat the alarm in the morning by almost two hours. He had a leisurely breakfast and drove cheerfully to work.

“Boss”, he said, ” The pill actually worked!”

“That’s all fine” said the boss, ” But where were you yesterday?”

Copyright (c) 2006 Jim Saka

If you’re business is not offering credit card payments,
you could potentially be losing out on a tremendous amount
of business.  Because of the options you give customers by
offering credit card payments, it creates a wider customer
base.  However, the first step to offering credit card
payments through your business is setting up a merchant
account.

A merchant account is a bank account that is established by
your company to receive the payments from credit card
purchases.  Simply done, right?  It is a little more
extensive than it comes off as, especially if you are
accepting credit cards online.  However, it is well worth
it to set up a merchant account because of the potential
increase in your business.

Generally, you will also need to lease equipment and
software when setting up your merchant account.  The reason
for this is to ensure you and the customer that the
transaction flows to your operating account.

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Do you spend so much time working in your business that you
never work on your business?

The corporate world knows the value of taking time out for
a step back, taking time to assess what is going right,
what is going wrong and what just plain isn’t going
anywhere. As a business owner (or as one who dreams of
owning a business), it is critical to take time out to plan
for the upcoming time period, be it a year, or even a
long-term goal. Otherwise, how can you get where you want
to be if you don’t know where that is? I usually plan two
business retreats per year:

~ One in late summer — it’s late enough in the current
year to have a good idea of how the year is progressing and
yet still have enough time to make changes if necessary.

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Salespeople are notorious for consistently searching for
ways to improve their performance, provide additional
services and increase sales. Sometimes however, despite
their very best intentions, salespeople “shoot themselves
in the foot” allowing disaster to replace success at the
most inopportune time.

I recently made a sales call on a new prospect which was
carefully investigated and researched prior to that initial
visit. That call was quite fruitful, from the initial phone
call requesting the appointment to my presentation itself.
It set the stage for a secondary visit, a joint call with
our factory representative of a complex electronic product
line. I knew that this factory representative was skilled
regarding his product line and came highly recommended from
someone whom I respect. In other words, I felt prepared,
“armed” and ready to engage this future customer in
dialogue concerning his production operations and our
opportunities to provide needed solutions.

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“Knowledge is power.” –Sir Francis Bacon

In Sir Francis Bacon’s day, that quote may have been nearer
the truth than today.  Any little bit of knowledge gave a
man or woman an edge and perhaps the power to move higher
in the intellectual or physical food chain.

Admittedly, even in today’s intricate world, the right
knowledge places a person in a better position to survive
physically, emotionally, mentally, fiscally, and common
sensically.  I don’t know if the last one’s real, I just
typed it.  “Stet” as the editors say.

However, no matter how much knowledge an individual
possesses, it is the use, the application of the knowledge
which provides the power.  A blackmailer potentially has
power over the victim because of the knowledge he or she
possesses about the victim.  If contact is not made with
the victim, and the threat communicated to them, the
blackmailer might as well be as powerless as if they
possessed nothing at all.

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