After passing muster, all successful applicants were subjected to the most exacting physical and psychological tests. Tests of physical endurance—how long can you support a column of mercury with one lungful of breath? Tests of mental stability—how long can you endure being locked up in a pitch-black, soundproof “sensory deprivation chamber” with no idea when you will be released? Tests of pain suppression—if we drive a long needle into the big muscle at the base of your thumb and pass an electric current through it, what will you do? Read the rest of this entry »
Why is talent more important than experience, brainpower, and willpower? continue…
October 1, 2008
No Comments » | 
Business Management, Career Management, Customer Service, Jobs | Tagged: alan shepard, all, america, capsule, carpenter, cooper, customer, down, drivers, fashion, filter, filter is constantly, flight, friends, glenn, gordon cooper, grissom, gus grissom, inspiration, love, main, man, men, mental, mental filter, military, missions, other, people, performance, reactions, six, space, stimuli, technology, tests, time, vastly different reactions, wally schirra, why, work, world | 
Permalink
Posted by DodoLovesMe
Why is talent more important than experience, brainpower, and willpower?
October 1, 2008For most roles, conventional wisdom advises managers to select for experience, for intelligence, or for determination. Talent, if mentioned at all, is an afterthought.
Conventional wisdom says:
“Experience makes the difference.” Managers who place a special emphasis on experience pay closest attention to a candidate’s work history. They pore over each person’s résumé, rating the companies who employed him and the kind of work he performed. They see his past as a window to his future. Read the rest of this entry »
No Comments » | 
Budgeting, Business Management, Customer Service | Tagged: all, america, brainpower, conventional, conventional wisdom, energy, experience, faith, history, inspiration, makes the difference, managers, military, opinion, other, people, percent, performance, range, range in performance, relationships, role, roles, school, select for experience, talents, teach, willpower, wisdom, work | 
Permalink
Posted by DodoLovesMe
The Two Pillars of a Successful Marketing Strategy Part 2
April 2, 2008Because until you do, until you begin to take it seriously, until you give it the earnest attention it demands, your Prototype will continue to be the only thing it could hope to be under the circumstances—a crap shoot!
At GERBER Business Development Corporation, we have created tools for our small business clients to begin the often arduous task of making demographic and psychographic determinations, and how to position their Prototype in the mind of their consumer. The impact has been astonishing.
Small businesses that acted like small businesses when we met them began to operate with intelligence.
Their customers came vividly alive to them, often for the very first time.
Inquiry, the active solicitation of specific information, and controlled experimentation replaced the guessing, blind hope, and feverish busy work that preceded them. Read the rest of this entry »
No Comments » | 
Advertising, Business Management, Business Plans, Customer Service, Home Based Business, Marketing, Promotion | Tagged: business, businesses, central demographic model, customer, customers, demographic, prototype, trading zone, unless | 
Permalink
Posted by DodoLovesMe
Does networking marketing involve selling?
March 22, 2008Many network marketing companies steer clear of the word ‘selling‘. The reason? Some 95 per cent of the population actually dislike selling. For this reason you will often read in the classified section of the newspaper an advertisement which reads:
Representatives of these companies invite prospects to ’share opportunities’. They couch their presentation in a way which suggests the business opportunity they are offering is simply that of sharing wealth. Let’s get one thing straight: network marketing involves selling.
The fact is, whichever way you look at it, a network marketing company only succeeds if its products or services are sold regularly month after month; in other words, through repeat purchases. Read the rest of this entry »
No Comments » | Advertising, Customer Service, Marketing, Promotion, Sales, Startup | Tagged: company, Marketing, network, opportunity, people, selling, time | Permalink
Posted by DodoLovesMe
Saying thank you in a memorable way continue…
March 19, 2008Use this technique every time you have to write, be it a thank- you card, letter, brochure, flyer or a company’s ‘address to the nation’. By having a clear picture of that one person you most want to hear the message, you come across as a genuine person — which you are, as you are not trying to communicate with the whole world, just with that one important person.
Your style is your own; your message is for them and they feel it, hear it and see it as a real communication.
I was fortunate to attend a Saatchi & Saatchi ‘creative week’ where we asked one of the stars how he created a global campaign. Andy replied that he certainly did not try to put in a black cow, a white sheep or a brown dog. Or a redhead, a blonde and a brunette. Or even a man, a woman and a child. Read the rest of this entry »
No Comments » | Customer Service, Marketing, Promotion | Tagged: birthday, birthday cards, card, down to create, just, mother and baby, people, person, thank | Permalink
Posted by DodoLovesMe
Network Marketing: Learn to communicate well
February 29, 2008Networking is a people business. So you must continually work at developing good relationships, team morale and effective communication.
Effective communication is a two-way interaction between two parties and it implies both verbal and nonverbal communication. It is a vital skill for all distributors and network marketing leaders. Ask yourself whether you would like to listen to yourself at a presentation meeting. Who is the best speaker you know? What ideas, techniques and presentation methods can you copy from him or her?
Here are some ways in which you can improve your communications:
Rehearse what you are going to say Do you know what you are going to say, why you want to say it and how you will put your points across? Read the rest of this entry »
1 Comment | Business Plans, Customer Service, Marketing, Promotion, Sales | Tagged: body language, communication, distributors, language, presentation, prospect, prospects, really, whether | Permalink
Posted by DodoLovesMe
The Follow-up: What Do You Do, Or Not Do, for an Encore?
February 17, 2008As I suggested at the beginning of this chapter, most entrepreneurs have a very specific purpose for their business plan and, once that purpose has been accomplished, the formal planning process is over. The People Express business plan is theonly written plan the company ever put together. The question of why the company never assembled another plan to guide its astonishing growth is one that prompts extensive explanation from founder Donald Burr.
Quite simply, he begins, the company didn’t really need an operating plan once it had financial backing. Not even for budgeting purposes?
“We felt budgeting was one of the things that stand in the way of customer service,” he explains. “The mind-set of budgeting is that it’s finance driven instead of customer driven.”
Burr points to Continental Airlines, which acquired People Express, to illustrate his point. “Continental Airlines lives by budgeting,” he says. “From the food to the uniforms to the people, it’s budget driven. You end up with a seriously flawed product as a result of such a process.” Read the rest of this entry »
No Comments » | Budgeting, Business Plans, Customer Service, financial | Tagged: airlines, billion, Budgeting, burr, business, business plan, company, competitors, explains, express, information, people, people express, plan, planning, says, system | Permalink
Posted by DodoLovesMe
Discover the New Customers (continue…)
February 13, 2008The new market leaders know that the greatest constraint on today’s customers is time—more critical even than money. The broader choices, the constant stream of innovations, and the pace of contemporary life conspire to crowd people’s schedules. Whether you’re in the market for a CD player for home or a new supplier of components for your company, you don’t have time to evaluate every option, consider every shred of information, and explore every contingency—even though it would probably be useful to do so.
Time is a flexible commodity: We willingly spend more of it on some activities than on others. A busy manager for whom every minute counts will happily spend hours on thegolf course, but an easygoing person with time to chat will hang up angrily on a telemarketer who calls at dinnertime. Read the rest of this entry »
No Comments » | Advertising, Business Management, Business Plans, Customer Service, Marketing, Promotion | Tagged: advice, buying, choices, customers, matrix, others, people, person, time, time and effort | Permalink
Posted by DodoLovesMe
Discover the New Customers
February 13, 2008Imagine a modern Rip Van Winkle waking up from a twenty-year sleep, He would surely be amazed at how the world has changed: He would be bewildered by new technology, bowled over at the speed and clutter of life in 2001, dazzled by the sheer abundance being thrust at him. The torrent of new products, goods, services, ideas, and innovations vying for his attention would be shocking.
How would he react? I suspect, like people through the ages in suddenly changed circumstances, Rip would reset his bearings from his old perspective before cautiously testing the new water. Like a child who clings to a teddy bear well into adolescence, or a lottery winner who repaints the old house, he would cling to the familiar and be slow to embrace what is new. Read the rest of this entry »
1 Comment | Advertising, Business Management, Business Plans, Customer Service, Marketing, Promotion, Sales | Tagged: companies, customers, just, rip, us | Permalink
Posted by DodoLovesMe
From Status QUO to Wholesale Change
February 13, 2008With all the demands on our time, it’s not surprising that for the most part, most of us value our routines and aren’t about to embrace every conceivable new possibility that comes our way.
We’re willing to examine options when we’re excited about a new product or service, or frustrated by what we have. But if we’re enjoying our current condition (or disliking alternatives), we will be in no mood to change, much less spend any time listening to a sales pitch. “Give us more of the same, and don’t bother us with the newfangled stuff,” we say. Like the worker who prefers his familiar job to the uncertainties of promotion, we resist any unfamiliarity. We would rather spend our time preserving and building on what we have than exploring what we could be doing instead. Read the rest of this entry »
No Comments » | Customer Service, Promotion, Sales | Tagged: customers, time | Permalink
Posted by DodoLovesMe
