You’ve probably heard the story of the golfer who steps up to the tee box and hits a wicked duck hook out of bounds.
Embarrassed, he reaches in his pocket, tees up another ball and again, hits another horrific twisting shot left out of bounds. Now angry and determined, he walks back to his bag, gets another ball, tees it up again, and duplicates his first two shots out of bounds to the left. In a fit of frustration, he slams his club into his bag, aggressively flings his club over …

Avoid Getting Your E-mails Deleted

From the E-Business Newsletter
It’s easy to fall into bad e-mailing habits because the whole format can begin to feel casual. By now everyone knows to avoid writing in all caps and using emoticons, but people often make the mistake of shooting off overly chummy professional e-mails and forming a devil-may-care disregard for grammar and punctuation. Simple rule of thumb: treat e-mail the same way you’d treat phoning someone. Get to the point, but be polite about it. Here is a look at some of the subtler …

Motivation is not enough. If you motivate an idiot, all you have is a motivated idiot.
Education alone is not enough either. Many “educated” individuals achieve very little on or off the job. They know what to do, and they know how to do it. The problem is they’re not motivated enough to do much about it.

The Gallup organization once analyzed its massive database and determined that about half (55 percent) of today’s employees have no enthusiasm for their work. Gallup labeled these people as “not engaged.” In other words, they …

Missing the target with your customer relationship management strategy? Follow these five steps to success

By Julia Chang
In his work in CRM consulting, Yacov Wrocherinsky has seen some disasters. One of the most recent was a large manufacturing company that spent millions on a high-end CRM system, only to realize two years later that it wasn’t providing accurate forecasts. “In the old days, people used to select a system based on a decision by the higher-ups, invest millions, and if the project didn’t meet expectations, they would write it off,” says …

Whatever you do in this life, do it to the best of your ability. Whether you are in school, running for president, playing a game, or working on something, do it in a quality way. Don’t be someone who just does something to get by, or is waiting to clock out. Be at the top of your game, because even if nobody knows, you will know, and the universe will know, and usually someone higher up in your organization is noticing.

Photo credit: Vedia
If something is challenging for you and you …

I grabbed some information on a fundamental event for success. It surprised me that Wikipedia actually makes the correlation between the military and business use of this process. I have yet to work for a company that puts these into place on any regular basis. As a sales professional you should put this to use after deals won and deals lost. Learning from your mistakes as well as your successes will make your sales more effective.

An After Action Review (AAR) is an assessment conducted after a project or major activity …

Dave Cheong is another blogger that is working his was to entrepreneurship I was surfing through his past posts and I came across a headline that caught my eye and wanted to share it with all of you. I saw 10 R’s to Apply if you want to Succeed and thought ‘WTF’ and had to read the entire post.
In his post he give a great framework for people that want to succeed to follow. Being that I am an entrepreneur at heart I thought that all of the 10 R’s …

You’ve hired them. Now how can you keep them around?

By Cam Marston Things aren’t always what they seem. If I could give you one bit of advice on dealing with the latest generation of employees to come under your management, it would be to remember those words…things aren’t always what they seem. If you are like most business leaders, you’ve no doubt noticed a trend in the way employees behave in recent years. Most likely you consider it a negative trend—too much entitlement, not enough loyalty, no …

The Top 12 Presentation Mistakes
Mistake #1: Overlooking “Murphy”
If it can go wrong, it will go wrong. This mistake basically means that you walk into the room where you’re going to present and something is wrong. LeRoux tells a story about a multimillion-dollar sales presentation to which “Murphy” paid a visit—in the form of missing curtains and a boardroom window overlooking a huge pool surrounded by bikini-clad swimmers (you can guess what the attendees looked at instead of the presenter).
Remedy: Visit important presentation rooms at least a day in advance. …

We use e-mail every day, but how many of us really know how to write a good e-mail? You’ll lose a lot in translation if you aren’t careful. The new book Send is the Elements of Style for e-mail. Here are some tips to keep your e-mail communication accurate.
1. Subject lines Don’t leave them blank, and don’t let them be ambiguous. A subject line is like a headline, and should act as a summary to the body of the e-mail. If the subject of the e-mail changes, update the …