Let's talk follow up!

Yesterday I was out with one of our salespeople and I was shocked at some of the comments that business owners shared with us regarding their salespeople and follow up.

I have personally experienced this with the folks that I lease my vehicle from, however I didn’t know that it extended this far. Countless sales must be lost each year because of this. What is so scary about following up? Years ago, I read a great book by Frank Bettger titled; how I raised myself from failure to success in selling. I would highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to be successful in sales. Here are a few pointers to help you in the meantime:

1. Never, never go home without at least one sale
2. Never end your day without sending an email to the people who bought, those who you met, and those you did not meet but got their business cards
3. Always visit the businesses next door to the one you just sold, right after the sale
4. Do not count a re-visit sale for your sale of the day

Follow these simple yet disciplined rules and you will be guaranteed not only success, but prosperity.

 

News

Every morning, I go through the same routine. I check in with our CTO in Sao Paulo Brazil, I read my emails, respond to the ones I have to, and then I go to my Google News and see what's happening in the World and Canada. This morning's news titles looked a little like this:

• Charlie Hebdo row: Cartoons divide French press
• Recall of ground beef from XL Foods in Alberta expands
• Security forces ring rebel area in Damascus, arrest 100
• Viewpoints: Anti-Islam film and self-censorship
• India hit by national strike over economic reforms
• Israeli air strike kills two Palestinians in Gaza
• Majority of Canadians would pay cash to dodge tax: survey
• Paying more for less: Canada's shrinking living room Add to ...
• Study finds why antidepressants work better for some

As a matter of fact, I think this is the way it looks every morning, and I am starting to think that there is no "good news" anymore, unless of course you would consider this to be good news:

• iPhone 5 review
• Lindsay Lohan arrested in New York
• Air Canada to unveil low-cost carrier
• HTC, Microsoft unveil new Windows phones

However, at the end of the day it's all the same, with a different twist. So, in view of this, I decided to search Google for a site that actually printed good news, this is what I came up with:

• http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/good-news/
• http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/good-news/

So, there is some good news around the world, I guess it's just a little harder to find. For me, from now on, I would rather have a dose of good news in the morning to help me tackle my days, it makes me feel good, and tells me that "hope" is still the strongest motivator, have a great day!

The Cloud...

What is cloud computing? Many of us have heard about it, some of us use it (Icloud from Apple) however most of us are still in the dark as to what it is and how it can make our lives easier, yes. I said easier!

So what is cloud computing? Cloud computing is the use of computing resources (hardware and software) that are delivered as a service over a network (typically the Internet). The name comes from the use of a cloud-shaped symbol as an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it contains in system diagrams. Cloud computing entrusts remote services with a user's data, software and computation.

Now in layman terms. It's like a harddrive located on a network (just like your home network) on the Internet that you can use. Let's try this, if you have an IPhone, and an IPad, and you want to make sure that if you lose your data you can recover it, you can back-up your devices to ICloud. If you want to sync your IPad (make them the same, share pictures and other information) with your IPhone, use ICloud. So basically Apple provides you with the ability to store up to 5 Gb of information for free on their servers. If you don't have an IPad, IPhone or other Aplle device you have other options, like:
 These types of available storages offer a multitude of options. I personally use both of them, one for pleasure and one for business. Why? Let's say I wanted to share some pictures wtih someone, or let's just say I wanted access to some files no matter where I was. I would simply create an account with any of these companies, and start adding files, photos, books, musics or videos to the folders I created. And, if I wanted to share some of these items, I simply would create a shared folder and invite someone to share it with.

My daughter lives in Ireland, so, if I took a few pictures around the house with my IPhone, or camera and tried to send those via email...good luck! If you are talking pictures in hugh resolution most of them will be over 1Mb in size and therefore could be rejected by the ISP, or web mail like Yahoo. And, because of their size, you could only send one per email, what a task. So instead, I have SugarSync, and I asked my daughter to also get a SugarSync account, and I created a photo folder that we share. Now, since that folder resides on my desktop (or IPhone, IPad, Mac, or whatever you are using) I can upload pictures there pretty quickly and, SugarSync will upload those to my cloud storage, and, my daughter can then go to her desktop folder and see all the pictures. We can do the same with books, videos, music and more.

Imagine the possibilities! Now, let me also caution you, these new storage methods only work if the Internet works. So, for safety measures, if you have important documents, back them up locally on something that you can take with you. I use the 690 Gb transcend, tough as nails, portable, and army tested.

Have a great day in the cloud!