Issue #1977
- WEALTHY: Triangle, square, circle, triangle, square… what? (Rick Pendergraft)
- HEALTHY: 3 natural remedies for high blood pressure (Dr. Al Sears)
- WISE: Zig Ziglar on customers who complain
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- How to deal with an unhappy customer (Robert Ringer)
- Tips for breaking through blog block, part 2 (Michael Masterson)
- It’s Good to Know… about crickets
- Add "sycophant" to your vocabulary
You Deserve Answers… And Now You’re Going to Get Them
If you haven’t gained the wealth you crave, you need to do something differently.
Why? Because all change, all progress begins with a single decision, a single action.
Are you ready to seize the final piece of the puzzle? The missing ingredient to coast you all the way to financial freedom? You deserve answers and now you’re going to get them.
In just 30 days from today your life could be in an entirely different place. Don’t delay.
- Patrick Coffey
Technical Analysis So Simple a Fourth-Grader Gets It
By Rick Pendergraft
A few years ago, I was asked to speak to my son’s fourth grade class and tell them about my job as a stock analyst. I tried to make it as simple as possible for them to understand, so I presented it as a type of problem they were already used to solving.
I put this up on the chalkboard and asked them, "What comes next in this sequence?":
The answer, of course, is a circle.
Well, when I look at stock charts, I am essentially doing the same thing: looking for patterns that keep repeating themselves.
Granted, what I do is a lot more complicated than the above example, but it’s basically the same. And though there are as many technical indicators as there are reporters at the Super Bowl, all you have to do is stick to a few of them.
One of my favorites is the Relative Strength Index (RSI), an overbought/oversold indicator. When the RSI reaches 30, it tells me that a particular stock is oversold – and when it reaches 70, it tells me that the stock is overbought.
Simple, right? Yet, when I combine the RSI with other indicators, it is a valuable tool that helps me make good buy/sell decisions by understanding which way a stock is likely to move.
[Ed. Note: Interested in 304 percent returns on your investment in 30 days? Find out how you can use the combined power of options and ETFs to supercharge your portfolio by watching Rick's exclusive interview with Taipan Financial News.]
"Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business."
Zig Ziglar
The Customer-Employee Challenge
By Robert Ringer
A waiter in a restaurant forgets your order, doesn’t refill the water, and hurries you through the meal. The furniture store that just delivered your $900 dresser with a missing handle won’t waive your shipping fee to get it repaired. It takes forever to reach a real person at your insurance company, and once you finally hear a human voice, you get put on hold. As I said in ETR #1965, some companies seem to have the mindset that customer service just isn’t that important.
I must admit, I’m generally reluctant to fulfill what I consider to be my moral obligation to tell business owners when I believe they have a personnel or customer-service problem on their hands. I used to, but I gave up on it a long time ago. Too many owners have demonstrated that they are just not interested in receiving such feedback.
Example …
A few years ago, I paid an audio/video company to do some extensive work for me, and dealt primarily with the vice president of new business development. Notwithstanding his impressive title, he never once delivered work when he promised it to me. Worse, he was unresponsive to an extreme.
I finally got so fed up with the bad service I was getting that I thought I should let the owner know about it. Since he had been the one to personally solicit my business, I knew he would be concerned about the lack of follow-through on the part of one of his top people. I emphasized that he should handle the problem gently, since we were only about halfway through my project and I had a lot of money invested in it.
Apparently, there was a wide disparity between our definitions of "gently." Wham! Immediately after the owner of the company talked to him, the vice president of new business development called to let me know, in very harsh terms, that he didn’t appreciate my "going behind his back" to complain to his boss. I didn’t bother to remind him that I had expressed my dissatisfaction directly to him on numerous occasions. Needless to say, working through the remainder of the project was very uncomfortable for both of us.
The lesson: If you’re a business owner, when a customer does you a favor by pointing out that one of your employees is not doing his job properly, don’t make the mistake of creating an employee-versus-customer battle. Be grateful to the customer, thank him for taking the time and trouble to tell you about his dissatisfaction, then approach the employee in question gently.
Meaning, tactfully point out the area or areas where you feel he needs some improvement, but leave the specific customer out of it. Why? For at least two good reasons. First, because you can count on the employee’s having his own version of the story, and that version is almost certain to cast him as an innocent victim. Which means you then have a customer-employee debacle on your hands. Second, if you intend to have an ongoing relationship with the customer, the offending employee is likely to act in ways that will drive that customer away from you by exacting retribution for "tattling" on him.
I believe that one of the reasons so many employers make this mistake is that they tend to be naive. All too often, they assume, at least subconsciously, that their employees care as much about their business as they do.
Fortunately, many employees do – at least the ones who are focused on getting ahead in life. However, the very employees who don’t treat their company’s customers with respect are the same ones who are most likely to excel at kissing up to their bosses.
How do some employees manage to get away with this kind of charade throughout their careers? Sadly, I believe it’s because the egos of many business owners simply can’t resist the verbiage of professional sycophants on their payroll. It makes them feel secure to know they are surrounded by a cadre of pit bulls who make great theater of protecting their bosses.
In fact, many bosses are addicted to the fabricated adulation of their employees. The unspoken understanding is that in exchange for treating the boss as if he were the Pope, they can count on him to stand up for the guys and gals on "his team" at all costs. All of which sounds very noble, except for the reality that it’s simply not good business. An owner cannot serve his customers effectively if he is focused on not offending his employees.
I want to emphasize that making certain that your employees are treating your customers with tender loving care does not prevent you from being respectful and loyal to those same employees. But your relationship with an employee should be based on how well he or she treats your most precious asset – your customers. Because without customers, you have nothing.
The customer must be satisfied at any cost. (And, by the way, if you happen to be an employee, this policy works in your favor too. You’ll get ahead much more quickly if you focus your efforts on pleasing your company’s customers … and having the customers tell your boss how great you are, rather than you continually telling him how great he is.)
In fact, you should look at every customer complaint not as a problem but as an opportunity to strengthen your relationship with that customer.
I’ve done this a thousand times in my career by not only apologizing and thanking the customer for letting me know about his dissatisfaction, but also by doing something special for him. Almost without fail, I’ve wound up with a more loyal customer.
[Ed. Note: Take a gigantic step toward achieving all your personal and professional goals - faster than you ever imagined - with Robert Ringer's best-selling personal-development program. And sign up for his Voice of Sanity e-letter here.]
Lower Prices… Better Service
Stop paying crazy high prices… and stop settling for puny profits, poor service and second-rate health care!
Suppose I told you three secrets that entitled you to…
- Triple your nest egg in just 11 months with complete safety.
- Block cancer and heart attacks for your whole life — at a cost of 15 cents.
- Laugh at high gas prices as you get $12 cash back every time you fill up your car.
Beat the "Silent Killer" Without Drugs
By Al Sears, MD
High blood pressure – the "silent killer" – strikes without warning. And at least 20 percent of Americans with this condition don’t even know they have it.
Once patients are diagnosed with high blood pressure, U.S. doctors are the most aggressive in the world at treating it, according to a new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. They prescribe drugs earlier than doctors in other countries and are the quickest to prescribe more than one drug at a time. A remarkable 64 percent of American patients are on two or more blood-pressure drugs. And those medications have side effects, including:
- Impotence
- Fatigue
- Congestive heart failure
- Memory loss
- Weakness
- Depression
- Persistent cough
Most patients don’t need dangerous drugs. One of the most powerful ways to combat this epidemic is completely natural and without serious side effects. I’m talking about taking CoQ10.
My Wellness Research Foundation found that a vast majority of people with high blood pressure have very low levels of CoQ10. So I’ve used this supplement to wean hundreds of patients off drugs. Treated with 200 mg of CoQ10 daily, their blood pressure returned to normal.
Here are two other natural supplements to help you lower your blood pressure:
Garlic naturally widens your blood vessels and lowers your systolic pressure (the top number) by 20 to 30 mm Hg and your diastolic pressure (the bottom number) by 10 to 20 mm Hg. A German study revealed that garlic also lowers your cholesterol and triglycerides (blood fat). Look for a supplement that contains at least 3,600 micrograms of allicin (the active ingredient in garlic) per dose.
Vitamin C is another proven way to lower your blood pressure. One 10-year study showed that the lower your levels of vitamin C, the higher your blood pressure and risk of stroke. Another study found that taking as little as 250 mg a day cut the risk of high blood pressure by almost half – and it’s very safe to take much more. I usually recommend starting with 1,000 mg of vitamin C daily.
[Ed. Note: Dr. Sears, a practicing physician and the author of The Doctor's Heart Cure, is a leading authority on longevity, physical fitness, and heart health.]
Notes From Michael Masterson’s Blog: No One Cares What You Had for Lunch, Part 2
Yesterday, I gave you six of Margaret Mason’s best ideas from her book No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog. Here are six more:
- Fight back. Sometimes a blog entry will cause controversy. This may make you feel like retreating. Don’t. Stand up for yourself. Acknowledge sensible arguments where they are made, but argue your point. Your readers want to see how deep your thinking is. So should you.
- Steal from someone else. If you have nothing especially good to say, post an excerpt from something you read. The fact that you found it interesting should be interesting to your readers. Reproduce only the best piece – the piece you really liked – and provide a link.
- Criticize. Condemn. Complain. "There is so much out there to mock," Mason says. "Try your hand at satire by spoofing something. Make fun of an ad, a Web page, or a social phenomenon."
- Your top 10. Pick a category but make it specific: documentary films, business books, hip-hop CDs. List your favorites and say why you like them. Obviously, your top-10 list should have some bearing on the subject of your blog.
- Pilfer a good book. After reading a good book, Mason posts everything she’s underlined in it. That’s one way to do it. A better way would be to spend extra time culling and editing the best stuff so it’s easier for your readers to scan. (Such as I’m doing right here.)
- Show them who you really are. If you have developed a strong reader base, they may be interested in knowing more about you. You can give them an amusing glance at your personality by posting photos on your blog – casual pictures of you and your stuff (your favorite hat, your bicycle, your computer, etc.). Show them what your handwriting looks like. And show them your desktop, the inside of your "junk" drawer, your bathroom, etc.
I’ll have a few more ideas to help you with your blog tomorrow…
- Michael Masterson
[Ed. Note: To read more of Michael's unedited, uncensored (and sometimes unexpected) ruminations, check out his blog here.
Learn how you can be part of an exclusive group of 25 to 50 ambitious businesspeople that Michael will be leading through an elite 5-day program that can help you dramatically increase the profitability of your business here.]
It’s Good to Know: About Crickets
The number of cricket chirps you count in a 15-second interval, plus 37, will tell you the current temperature.
Start Making Money Today
Interested in getting a nice little side-business going on the Internet? Or maybe even from your living-room table?
But you don’t have too much money, you don’t have too much time, and you’re not exactly Bill Gates when it comes to technology. Sound familiar?
A lot of people are in the same boat. The good news is that ETR has heard you. And now we’ve done something about it…
We’ve asked our colleague Marc Charles to be on the lookout for profit opportunities that can be run from a kitchen table, your desktop or out on the road.
Criteria? They’ve got to be inexpensive, easy to start, and still have great income potential, but without a lot of red tape.
They say when you’re first getting your feet wet with a side-business, the most important dollar to make is the first one. Well, Marc is an expert at taking beginning entrepreneurs and showing you how to make that first buck. He knows, because he’s done it dozens of times for himself, his family and his friends.
If you’ve been dreaming about starting your own business … now you can get started for about the price of 2 lattes.
And get this – you could be making money literally just hours from now. Imagine the feeling of finally getting a side business launched – TODAY!
- Patrick Coffey
Word to the Wise: Sycophant
A "sycophant" (SIK-uh-funt) – from the Greek for "accuser" (especially a false accuser) – is a person who seeks favor by flattering people of wealth or influence.
Example (as used by Robert Ringer today): "Sadly, I believe… the egos of many business owners simply can’t resist the verbiage of professional sycophants on their payroll."
Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2007
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