Month: May 2009

I’m guest blogging on a certain site.
I offered a selection of topics
I could cover.
None of them were acceptable
to the host.

No problem.
I obviously didn’t understand
what the site’s goals were.

But then she quoted her readership numbers.
Low.
Very low.
Lower than the site I was promoting.

Of course, I’ll still guest blog
(I made a commitment)
but now,
I’m a little less anxious to please.

If you want to impress someone
with your numbers,
make sure those numbers are impressive.

Everyone likes to hear (or read)
their own name
and this rule holds true for assistants.

Tony Parinello and David Mattson,
authors of
Five Minutes With VITO,
(Very Important Top Officer)
says
“The first thing you want to do,
in any correspondence,
is you want to salute
the uniform of the private assistant.
The private assistant’s name
has to be in any correspondence
you send to VITO.”

And by any correspondence,
that includes email.
Acknowledge the gatekeeper
and you will be more likely
to get past.

In the upcoming horror flick
Drag Me To Hell,
the heroine is billed as
‘a nice girl.’
She may be a nice girl
(I don’t know,
I haven’t seen the movie)
but her customer service skills suck.

First
she ‘fires’ a customer publicly
(were there no private meeting rooms vacant?).
Then she fails to provide
that customer with alternatives.

There are ALWAYS alternatives.
To simply cut a customer off
without providing them
with other sources
IS cruel.
(Here’s a hint…
If you have to call security
when you fire a customer,
you’re doing it wrong.)

Is it cruel enough
to warrant spending an eternity in hell?
I don’t know…

Four weeks ago,
Invisible, my second novel,
was number 18
in sales for my publisher.

I then took 3 weeks off,
during which time
I didn’t do any promotion
or fan response.
It sunk to number 43.

A week after I came back
(back to promoting
and back to talking to readers),
Invisible is number 21 on the list.

Promotion works.
Selling works.
Responding to customers (readers) works.
Stop doing all that
and your sales will stop also.

We’ve all had it happen.
A laptop dies in the middle
of a presentation.
The product we’re demonstrating
doesn’t work quite the way
we expect it.
Something happens on CNN
that distracts the buyers we’re pitching.

Most people try to
continue on
like nothing happened.
The best salespeople, however,
address the interruption.

Stephen C. Lundin and Carr Hagerman
talk about this in their book
Top Performer.

“Yet even in the West End
when a baby cries
or a cell phone rings,
the best actors make a witty comment
that flows from their character
and then continue with the script unperturbed.
Any other approach creates
negative energy and tension
in the audience.
The audience is more upset
because of empathy for the actor
than for themselves
and a good actor understands
that he or she
needs to relieve the tension.”