Controlling Personal Calls at the Office

By Nancy Friedman

PERSONAL CALLS...we all get them at work. Home, family, friends, even co-workers just wanting to chat about the weekend plans.

If you allow personal calls at the office, is the privilege being abused? Here are some ideas and tips to help control personal calls at the office.

First...and it’s a MUST. Let staff know your guidelines on personal phone calls. And if you’re looking around and thinking, "Gee, we don’t have any guidelines," now is a good time to develop one.

It will help all concerned if there are guidelines, and specific ones, on personal calls at work. We’ve gathered up a few suggestions. Hope they help.

Guideline #1: NEVER let an in-person customer wait while you are on a personal call. (Even if you are on a business call, the customer needs be acknowledged. Most effective would be EYE contact with a gentle smile and nod that you recognize they are standing there.)

What we hear most about employees on a personal call at work is the fact that the employee doesn’t even look up and nod. If you can, offer the person who is standing there something about your company to read – perhaps a pamphlet or new product brochure.

Guideline #2: Sometimes employees may just not know how to tactfully tell a friend or relative they’re at work and unable to talk. They may not know how to tactfully end a conversation. They may be embarrassed to tell them. Here’s a couple Telephone Doctor tips on how to handle that situation graciously:

"Aunt Mary, I’d like to hear more about your trip, but I’m at work and need to finish a project I’m working on today. Let me call you later tonight when we can talk more in depth. Thanks for calling. Talk with you later."

OR

"Hi, Sue. Good to hear from you. Can I give you a call later on today, around lunchtime, or near 5? I’m working on something now that needs my full attention."

Important. Let your employees know that if a co-worker or supervisor approaches them at their desk they are expected to put their personal call on hold. Perhaps end the conversation at that point. Personal calls can wait...other office personnel shouldn’t.

If the supervisor or another co-worker is on a legitimate business call, attempt to use the client’s name during the call. It makes it easier for the person standing there to realize that it is a business call. (Besides, using the customers name also helps to build rapport.) There’s not an intelligent manager around who would intentionally interrupt a business call.

If one employee is receiving too many personal calls, it’s time for, as they say, “intervention.” Let the employee know they certainly may have a few personal calls, if you allow them; however, lately it seems to be over the top. Would they please ask those callers to do so either during lunch or closer to 5? Or perhaps you can call them at home tonight. Emergencies? Not a problem. Just let other office personnel know about it.

Nancy Friedman is president of Telephone Doctor®, an international customer service training company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, specializing in customer service and telephone skills. She is a KEYNOTE speaker at association conferences and corporate gatherings and is the author of four best selling books. Call 314-291-1012 for more information or visit the website at www.telephonedoctor.com.

Published in Networking Today, November 2005.

How to Deal With Energy Suckers (Negative People)

By Barbara Bartlein

We all know some; maybe at work or even at home. The Energy Suckers. They will suck you dry if you fall into their trap.

Energy Suckers are negative people. It’s easy to know when you are with them because the longer the exposure, the more drained you feel. You try to avoid them, but Energy Suckers thrive on spreading bad tidings so they seek you out. They show up in your office, at meetings, and family gatherings.

If they call you on the phone, your stomach starts to hurt as soon as you realize who is calling. While you pretend to listen, you are really thinking of a way to get off the phone. In fact, you try to return their calls when you know they won’t be at home or at the office. You just want credit for the call; you don’t really want to talk with them.

While you don’t want to join them in the mud, they seem to know when you are vulnerable and try to pull you in. You may even find, to your dismay that you agree with some of what they are saying.

So how do you protect yourself? Here are some of the common types of Energy Suckers and how to deal with them:

• The Seagull—These are often managers or supervisors. They fly by when everyone is busy with a project, deposit garbage all over, and soar away after destroying enthusiasm. They tend to pick at details like they are combing the beach, making negative comments as they work. They leave staff and co-workers feeling defeated and unappreciated.
  
  
• Solution: Obtain careful clarification before starting a project. If there has been confusion in the past with this Sucker, you may want to get things in writing.
  
  
• The Yeah-Butts—While they pretend to be friendly, their real focus is on the negative. They often use the phrase, “Yeah, but…” They then describe why the procedure, idea, or approach couldn’t possibly work. Experienced “Yeah-Butts” extend their method to other areas of life as well. If you mention the great weather, they say, “Yeah, but it’s supposed to rain by the weekend.” If you tell them they look nice, they say, “Yeah, but this dress really isn’t in style anymore.” They are not happy and they want you to know it.
  
  
• Solution: Ignore Yeah-Butts and their awful phrase. You may want to charge a quarter when ever someone in the office or at home uses the “Yeah, But” phrase.
  
  
• The Muck Mixers—These are the folks who love to stir the pot. They look for gossip or “information” that they feel they must know and then take it upon themselves to disseminate the dirt. They adore turmoil and conflict and will feed both if given the chance. Muck Mixers often “keep score” and tend to remember obscure information that can hurt others or their reputations. They are sometimes hard to ignore because their information is SOOO interesting.
  
  
• Solution: Avoid them like the plague or you will also become fodder for discussion. Their lack of productivity will eventually catch up with them. Make sure you are not standing next to them when they go down.
  
  
• Melvin Milktoast or Dorothy Doormat—These are the male and female equivalents of the Martyr. They are absolutely convinced that no one has seen the trouble they have. No one works as hard as they do. And they are the only ones who do not get a break. They seem to find trouble and then want everyone to know how they fix things at great personal expense. They may try to make those around them feel guilty with their superhuman efforts.
  
• Solution: Let them work. You have worked too hard to have a balanced life to fall for this game. Stay away from the Energy Suckers in your life. Spend your time with people who lift you up…not pull you down. You will find your own energy to be contagious.
  

Sign up for Barbara's FREE email newsletter at www.barbbartlein.com.

Barbara Bartlein is the PeoplePro™. She helps businesses sell more goods and services by developing people. She can be reached at 888-747-9953, by email at: barb@barbbartlein.com or visit her Web site at www.ThePeoplePro.com. Published in Networking Today, November 2005.

The Power of Choice!

By John Boe

In aviation, the word “attitude” is a term that refers to the angle that the plane meets the wind, if the wings are level with the horizon and whether the aircraft is climbing or descending. The pilot who fails to take responsibility for the attitude of his or her aircraft is in serious trouble. And likewise, any leader who fails to control his or her thoughts and take responsibility for their attitude runs a similar risk.

As a sales manager, you not only set the pace for your sales team, but you're responsible for setting the tone as well. For better or worse, the leader's attitude is contagious and permeates throughout their organization. Positive, upbeat companies are always led by positive, upbeat managers. While we're not always able to control our circumstances, we can and must control how we respond to life's difficulties, setbacks, and challenges. We have a choice about how our day is going to be.

How often do you talk to yourself and what do you say? Research in the field of psychology indicates that the average person maintains an ongoing mental dialog, or “self-talk,” of between 150 to 300 words per minute. Unfortunately, not all of these thoughts are positive. In fact, it has been estimated that approximately forty percent of the thousands of thoughts we have each day tend to be negative and self-critical in nature. Most of us are generally unaware of this negative background chatter, let alone its sabotaging effect on our emotional state, performance, and well-being.

“Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Choose your words, for they become actions. Understand your actions, for they become habits. Study your habits, for they will become your character. Develop your character, for it becomes your destiny.” - Anonymous

Earl Nightingale, cofounder of the Nightingale-Conant Corp., concluded that life's “strangest secret” is that you become what you think about all day long. If you want to know where your predominant thoughts lie and what you believe, look at what you're experiencing in your life. Your thoughts are creative by nature and express themselves through your emotions, which in turn, drive your actions. Everything you say both positive and negative is in fact an affirmation and reflects your belief. Whatever you think, feel, or say about your life today is the scaffolding that builds the events you will experience in the future.

Affirmation and Positive Self-Talk

William Shakespeare said, "nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” The first step in the process of changing your belief system is to monitor your thoughts and the next step is to control them through the power of choice. Once you become conscious of the critical aspects of your internal dialogue, you can choose to re-frame your negative thoughts by substituting affirmative statements.

World-class athletes understand the value of affirmation and recognize the impact of their mental preparation on their physical performance. They use the power of positive affirmation to reduce anxiety and increase their expectation of achievement. To be of maximum benefit an affirmation must be simple, encouraging, and stated in the present tense. By repeating an affirmation over and over again it becomes embedded in the subconscious mind.

Do affirmations really work and can they propel a person to greatness? As a teenager beginning his boxing career in Louisville, Kentucky, Cassius Clay would frequently affirm, "I am the greatest of all time!" While many considered him boastful and few took this eighty-nine pound, twelve year old seriously, Mohammad Ali used the power of affirmation to become the greatest boxer of all time and arguably the most recognizable sports figure in the world.

Henry Ford was right when he said, “Whether you think you can or think you can't – you're right.” Your belief system, like your computer, doesn't judge what you input; it simply accepts it as the truth. The key to cultivating and maintaining a positive mental attitude is to use your power of choice and take control of your thinking. It's a challenging task to develop a calm, focused mind, but well worth the effort.

Action Plan:
Here are some suggestions to help you have a good day every day.

1. Establish the habit of getting up early.
   
   
2. Upon rising, read or listen to something positive and inspirational. Clinical studies indicate that our mind is most receptive to suggestion during the first fifteen minutes upon awakening. Here are some books that will help you start your day off on the right foot.
   

• How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger
  
• The Magic Of Believing by Claude M. Bristol
  
• You'll See It When You Believe It by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
  
• The Power Of Positive Thinking by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale
  
• Think and Grow Rich by Dr. Napoleon Hill
  
• Psycho-Cybernetics by Dr. Maxwell Maltz

3. Take a few moments to consider the upcoming activities of your day. Visualize events flowing. See people accept your ideas and your day unfolding in a harmonious and productive way. This is a good time to verbalize your affirmations.

4. Take time for some physical exercise.

5. At noon, take a ten minute mental break to relax and replenish your energy.

John Boe presents a variety of training and motivational programs for meetings and conventions. John brings over twenty years of experience as an award-winning sales trainer to the platform. His programs are unique, consistently well received, and get results. Visit www.johnboe.com for more information. Published in Networking Today, November 2005.

Researching On The Net – Take Advantage of Directories

By Olivia Lambeth

For most people, finding something on the Internet can be like searching for a needle in a haystack. There is no shortage of information – there are millions of documents online published by specialists, scientists, teachers, and students, some of which will be useful for your research project. But, the difficulty lies in trying to find them.

Many people turn to search engines for help. But the problem with search engines is that they return a lot of results, sometimes millions. And most of the results are junk. You end up looking at irrelevant pages while trying to find the relevant ones. However, an alternative is to find a Web site where the topics have been organized and cataloged, like in a library, so that everything in a particular area is relevant. Such sites are called "directories."

Directories are compiled by teams of editors who choose what they judge to be the best sites and organize them by categories, subcategories, and further subcategories of the subcategories. While they generally provide searching tools to find information in sites they list, you can browse directories as well. To browse directories is to choose categories of interest and see where they lead. And the best place to start is with a general category. Then, choose a subcategory within it, and continue through subcategories of the subcategories till the topic narrows. This is a good way to get quick information on a topic.

The advantage of a directory is that information will be well organized and all the results will most likely be on the topic that you’re looking for. There are directories that focus on one subject area as well as ones that collect and organize resources in a number of areas.

Features of Subject Organized Directories

While deciding on which directory to use, it’s useful to take note of the features of subject-organized directories. With subject organized directories, the items are, as in a library, arranged with like items, and lateral browsing may offer fruitful possibilities. And, selectivity can compensate for the lack of comprehensiveness in some cases; for example, while searching for a standard or classic work in a subject area. Also there are greater chances of finding quality resources. And in contrast to automatic index searching, these selective human-compiled lists will not normally throw up multiple hits for the same work.

Specialized Subject Directories

Because, it’s impossible to keep up with important sites in all subject areas, there is usually a guide, compiled by a subject specialist, to important resources in his or her area of expertise. These specialized guides are more comprehensive and likely, than a general subject directory, to produce relevant information. For example, Voice of the Shuttle (http://vos.ucsb.edu) provides an excellent starting point for humanities research. And, film buffs should consider starting their search with the Internet Movie Database (http://us.imdb.com).

Many of these sites offer reviews and annotations of the subject directories included. Also, most work on the principle of allowing subject experts to maintain the individual subject directories. And while some clearinghouses maintain specialized guides on their own Web site, others link to guides located at various remote sites. The most useful directories for serious researchers are the Argus Clearinghouse, About.com, and Virtual Library .

Olivia Lambeth is a creative and multi-talented fashion designer and has worked with reputed fashion houses for the past twelve years. She specialized in casual wear but nevertheless her unique design for formal and hand work is worth mentioning. For more information visit Discount Search. Published in Networking Today, November 2005.

Location, Location, Location: 41 Places to Network

By Karen Susman

Networking conjures up a picture of networking events where hundreds of people who appear to know each other gather to pass out and collect stacks of business cards. If you limit your networking to networking events, you are limiting your opportunities. Instead, network all the time, everywhere.

Make networking everywhere with anyone easier by finding the common ground you share with other people. Start with your location. If you're at a football game, you have something in common with every other person in the stands. If you've always wanted to meet a particular author, attend her book signing. You'll also have an immediate commonality with those sitting on your right and left. When you literally share common ground with someone, you're on your way to networking success.

A few places to network.

1. Conventions. Network at conventions other than the one you're attending.
   
2. Conferences where people attend that you'd like to meet
   
3. Meetings
   
4. Trade shows
5. Planes, trains, buses
6. Grocery
7. Galleries
8. Museums
9. Seminars and workshops
10. Parties
11. Coffee shops
12. Restaurants.
13. Children's birthday parties
14. Alumni groups
15. Your high school classmates
16. Your spouse's professional functions
17. The theater
18. A concert
19. PTA
20. Neighborhood block parties
21. Church or synagogue
22. Charity events
23. Committee meetings of large organizations
24. Waiting in line.
25. The restroom (Women are pros at this.)
26. Gas station
27. Car dealerships
28. Library
29. Ski lift
30. Tiffany's
31. Bookstore
32. Service clubs
33. Hobby activities
34. Sporting events
35. Traveling
    
36. Checking in to a hotel
37. Conference field trips
38. Volunteering
39. Waiting rooms
40. Airports and train stations
41. Political campaigns
    

Use good judgment, of course. Location commonality is the answer to the questions, "What do we talk about?" and "How do I get a conversation started?" Begin with where you are and the event(s) going on around you. Get started networking all the time everywhere.

Karen Susman, Speaker/Author/Coach, works with organizations and individuals that want to maximize their performance and quality of life. Check out her free tips and articles at www.karensusman.com. Karen can be reached at 1-888-678-8818 or karen@karensusman.com. Published in Networking Today, November 2005.

Introductions To Be Remembered

By Susan Regier

No matter where you are…or what you’re doing…you could be asked, “What do you do?”

Do you mumble an incoherent answer or simply stumble over words, leaving the inquirer confused.

When it’s your turn to stand before a group of your peers and inspire others to use your products or services, or to send referrals your way, are you prepared? Do others really understand what it is that you do?

Your elevator speech is a short (15-30 second) synopsis that concisely and memorably introduces you. It spotlights your uniqueness and focuses on the benefits you provide. And it is delivered effortlessly.

Basically, it’s an “Elevator Speech” that includes six elements:

• Your name (you’d be amazed at how many people forget this information!)
  
• Your business or profession
  
• A hook that grabs attention
  
• A brief description of your business – separate yourself from the pack
  
• A benefit statement of one particular product or service you offer or a problem you solve
  
• Who you do it for

The “hook” is a way to get people to perk up and listen to what you have to say. To find your hook, as yourself:

1. What’s the most unusual part of my business?
   
2. What’s the most interesting or exciting part of my business?
   
3. What’s the most dramatic part of my business?
   
4. What’s the most humourous part of my business?
   

Does your hook serve better as a question or a statement? Either is acceptable. It can be dramatic or humourous. Anecdotes and personal experiences make great hooks. But remember, your hook should relate to your objective, your listener, and your approach.

What do you do? Think in terms of the benefits your clients derive from your services: What's in it for me? By breaking your product or service down to its most basic form, you will be able to effectively describe to other people what you do. And explain who you are marketing to – who is your perfect client or who buys your product or service.

Avoid saying things that are “you” based instead of customer oriented, such as:

• “I wear several hats.” (We all do. Make it easy for someone to understand what you do in a few moments.)
  
• “My company does lots of things.”
  
• “It’s hard to explain what we do.” (If you can’t explain it, how is someone supposed to know what you do?)
  
• “We give great service.” “We sell only quality products” – or
  
• “We have the best selection of products.”
  

Does your introduction work? People will judge not only the message, but also the messenger. How you look, carry yourself, and listen will affect what others do with the message you've delivered. Speak loud enough for all to hear and speak slowly. And most importantly, sound passionate about what you are talking about. If you aren’t excited by what you do, why would anyone else be interested in working with you?

Susan Regier is the publisher/editor of Networking Today and owner of Vantage One Writing, a professional writing service for businesses. (519) 471-8726 E-mail: susan@vantageone.ca Web site: www.vantageone.ca Published in Networking Today, November 2005.

Profile: In House Logic...that's just logical!

By Susan Regier

Having a high-impact Web site that will achieve the results a business demands can be a challenge – notoriously, Web developers are either talented graphic artists or they are accomplished techno wizards. Jayme Cousins is that rare individual who combines left brain/right brain thinking and does both extremely well.

Ten years after creating his first commercial Web site in 1994, Cousins left his marketing manager position at a local software company and opened his own Web development business, In House Logic. His company stands apart from competitors as he combines a sense of style and design ability while really understanding the technology involved behind the scenes.

“I want to raise the bar of small business Web sites,” said Cousins, “by blending quality, style, and technical soundness. A small business Web site should portray a professional look. It doesn’t have to be flashy – and it’s usually better if it’s not. It does have to be clean, clear, and usable. It should portray the idea that you take your viewers seriously.”

Cousins has developed many high-profile specialty Web sites including the National Peace Foundation, Washington, DC, Mainline Notebooks, South Western Ontario, the International Federation of University Women, the London and Area Bed & Breakfast Association, and Shear Elegance Salon & Spa. He has developed online demo software delivery systems, secure client information and product/event registration Web sites, and has presented training sessions throughout North and South America.

“The goal is not to flog the latest whiz-bang technologies,” said Cousins. “Nor is it to create a work of art so demanding that it can’t survive being seen around the world by different systems. Finding the right fit for the client requires active listening and a comprehensive understanding of the possibilities.”

With so many variations in computers, Web browsers, platforms and operating systems many Web sites don’t stand up. “Not everyone is working on Internet Explorer on a Windows’ machine. You need to know the differences between Macs, Linux, and Windows, and each of their Web browsers,” said Cousins. In House Logic provides several services in addition to Web design and construction that includes online application development, technical support and consulting, and traditional marketing services such as logo design and printed materials.

Cousins advises clients to focus on their audience. “You already know and love your product or service. The job is to communicate that passion to others.”

In House Logic is the logical alternative to in-house marketing and technical support staff.

Susan Regier is the publisher/editor of Networking Today and owner of Vantage One Writing, a professional writing service for businesses. (519) 471-8726 E-mail: susan@vantageone.ca Web site: www.vantageone.ca Published in Networking Today, November 2005.