During a lull in my dialog, one blond haired freckled boy asked “Do you fire people from their job?” He totally focused upon me and I knew at that moment my answer would be critical. I told him that sometimes that was a necessary but sad part of my work. To that response, he sighed and in a trembling voice said, “My father was fired last week…is he a bad man to have his boss fire him?”

The teacher’s eyes welled with tears thus revealing to me that the next few moments were vital and I should tread with care. Through a small child’s effort to understand the whys of a situation, the nurturing aspects of my personality surged forward. I answered him with tenderness. To this day I still feel the tremendous weight of responsibility for making sure I communicate in such a way that it reinforces a person’s self esteem rather than carelessly destroy hope or motivation.

As females, we strove to burst through the Glass Ceiling in our careers, but I wonder if we dodged the shards?

Inadvertently, somewhere along the way, it became a hostile competition among women. Through direct experience and observation, I’ve witnessed my female counterparts becoming their own worst enemy. Rather than focusing on the strengths of what women offer each other and using them to everyone’s advantage, efforts to undermine talented coworkers evolved into an all-or-nothing-war-like campaign.

The concept of mentoring and building up others to take your position when you move on was a foreign concept until the last decade. Fortunately, women began to realize that competition for promotion doesn’t have to be brutal. It’s about understanding that personality, creativity, dedication and accountability are the primary assets to promote.
When I speak with younger women in the work force, they aren’t nearly impacted by gender based promotions as Baby Boomer women were. Through these conversations I realized that this new generation was participating in what I call “reverse mentoring.” Our youth is teaching us about the new world order and sociological changes.

Mentoring isn’t something that simply takes up time and space anymore.

It is a personalized and truthful interaction with other human beings for the betterment of all. Advice is now given with a caring spirit rather than a destructive mindset and it creates a new tone for success. Rather than operating in an environment of isolation, we can talk about family and dreams. But then we have to take it a step further and hold each other accountable for making those dreams a reality.

Mastermind group creation is a concept that is thriving in today’s business world.

Each participant has something to offer the other members of the group and whatever is discussed in those meetings stays confidential. It is a shared perspective on a common problem that allows us to reconnect the dots and come at an issue from a different direction.

Responsibility for our communication efforts, interactions, and intent must be fully accepted by us if we choose to become a mentor, informally or formally. There is no room for “off the cuff remarks” because when an individual is a mentor, the mentee places you in a position of trust and honor. It is your duty to handle it delicately and respectfully.
To this day, I’m proud of the direction I chose to take when answering that small boy’s question about his father’s character. By choosing to give him hope and perspective, I realigned myself permanently in respect to my female relationships and grew as a business professional, wife and mother.

Teaching around a campfire or through mentoring opportunities is hardwired in all of us. I don’t consider it a weakness to reach out to another person for help. And it only enhances your personal power when you respond and support others who need you.

Be a guide on the side: mentoring matters.

About the Author:

Karel Murray is a Certified Speaking Professional, author of “Hitting Our Stride: Women, Work and What Matters” and business trainer who helps entrepreneurs and executives resolve interpersonal issues and balance their work/personal lives. Now, you can listen to her exciting, free interviews that will help you maintain and sustain a healthy business and lifestyle at http://www.JustForAMomentPodcast.com. To learn more about Karel Murray, please go to her website http://www.Karel.com

So how do you make things happen and achieve positive results?

You have to learn how to effectively influence others. Sure you can threaten vendors, contractors, subcontractors and architects with no further business if they don’t do what you ask. That can work, but you are kidding yourself if you believe that approach will result in their best effort. It won’t.

The intangibles of doing that “little extra” and that “attention to detail”  will rapidly disappear. You get exactly what you contracted for and you can never address the intangibles in the contract because they simply won’t care anymore.

Or, you can learn how to influence without authority. If you are looking for best performance and service that wow’s your tenants or the facilities employees – read on.

As you delve deeper within this article, you will soon realize that you can motivate others to higher levels of performance You can  positively impact the morale of your employees or tenants of the facility and have a positive impact on your vendors, subcontractors and others who provide services to your facility. The result – you get more work done and a higher level of cooperation.

Influencing without Positional Authority Strategy #1: Build Positive Relationships

We estimate that more than 80% of the time we spend as coaches to high-performance facility managers and leaders – is spent on helping them manage the transition and work their way through performance issues with others.
You will fast-track and gain altitude in your career as a facility manager when you learn and practice the keys to building strong, effective interpersonal relationships with others. And, it starts with recognizing that nothing happens until a relationship is developed.
Building a relationship includes:
- Having the other person’s best interest in mind – win-win verses win-lose
-Understanding and respecting the other person’s work style and key needs/expectations
-Understanding and respecting personality differences
-Finding areas of mutual interest
-Using exchange principles to enhance the relationship

Influencing without Positional Authority Strategy #2: Honor the Law of Reciprocation

The law of reciprocation involves a mutual value for value exchange. To effectively engage in the law of reciprocation, you must identify what the recipient values – whether the other person is your employee, an employee or tenant in the facility, or a contractor.

For example you can offer employees and tenants:

-Funding for projects,  additional personnel, space
-Organizational support
-Your own personal support by  being readily available when an employee or tenant  is stressed, vulnerable or perhaps just needs someone listen to them
-Reliability — Doing what you say when you say you will do it
-Your acknowledgement
-Vision — Identifying the future direction, portraying excitement and confidence in the future, and in the outcome of the project
-Rapid response — This is self-explanatory
-Recognition –It can be an award, a new project assignment or praise at a public meeting

You can offer vendors and subcontractors:

-Information – Competitive intelligence, industry trends, upcoming changes
-Gratitude by thanking them with testimonials
-Your recommendation – The best way you can motivate your vendors and subcontractors is to let them know if they meet or exceed your expectations you will be more than happy to refer them to others.
-Bonuses when they meet certain milestones or criteria

No matter what you offer, it must be meaningful to the recipient. Just because we think we are providing something of value does not mean the recipient agrees with us. To determine what is meaningful, we need to understand issues such as:

•    What do they need to succeed?
•    How are they measured on their performance?
•    How are they rewarded? And what is their greatest reward?
•    Career objectives
•    Their key concerns (or fears if they will share it with you)
•    Key expectations (of their boss, peers, subordinates, their constituents)
•    Recognition / Privacy. Preferences of the individual and considering the culture of the organization
•    Interests outside the organization

This means you must first build a relationship with your employees, employees or tenants of the facility and those who work for your facility!

Influencing without Positional Authority Strategy #3: Participate in Healthy Conflict

It’s possible that as you work to influence others without positional authority, that conflict will arise. Employees, employees and tenants of the facility and contractors will push back, argue, and disagree.

Let’s face it, some people like to argue, negotiate and play devils advocate. In other words “they love a good fight”.

So, facility managers, please take note: Conflict is NOT bad or wrong.  Engaged in the right way, conflict is good. In fact, it’s not only good, it’s essential for facility growth and development. “Healthy conflict”, that is vibrant and candid leads to:

-Expanding ideas and perspectives
-Identifying more options
-Better decisions
-Inclusion (individual value and contribution) rather than reinforcing exclusion and a natural futility when not being heard

So learn how to appreciate and participate in healthy conflict.

Remember, being a successful facility manager requires more that the hard skills we learn in school. Success also requires that we recognize and master the intangibles of successful management. And the most powerful intangible that is extremely important to master is the ability to influence others without authority. It will provide you with leverage and enable you to garner more support than you would ever achieve on your own or through positional authority alone.

About the Authors:

Tony Kubica and Sara LaForest are facility management consultants with more than 50+ years of combined experience in helping organizations improve their business performance. They say that trying to influence with positional authority is just one way to sabotage your business. Get their complete “Self-Sabotage in Business White Paper” at: http://www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com/resources.php and uncover the common, subtle ways you are harming your performance.

Bill creates and sustains powerful but subtle relationships that form the glue of a community. He maintains the balance between the myriad elements of his world through constant attention and tending. His attention, while caring and supportive, is subtle and not readily apparent to those around him as he acts indirectly, behind the scenes, and outside the spotlight. Belonging is critical to him, but being the center of attention is not his style.

Moving smoothly and easily between daily events as his awareness emerges and recedes, Bill attends, in proper proportion, to events and people where connection and relationships require his attention. He builds connections steadily and patiently because he knows that relationships require time. He avoids pushing, demanding, or abrupt action because he trusts that what needs to be done will be done in its proper time.

Bill facilitates the development of an environment that is comfortable, one that fosters and encourages people. When his environment shifts away from cooperation, team building, and community, he quietly influences its realignment, putting his own personal needs aside if necessary. Bill has learned that taking care of himself is best done by taking care of the community within which he lives and works. While this is done with great care it is not passive, as he skillfully weaves a web of connections that binds those within his community closely to him.

Bill welcomes new events that support his traditions and values, and will adopt smoothly to change that he experiences as connected to the flow of his personal history. While he deeply distrusts arbitrary change, others often seek him out during times of upheaval because his skills are invaluable to restoring stability, coherence, and identity.

Bill uses his relational communities to gather and transmit informal information, after he has intuited what to pass on and what to withhold. He makes this determination through his understanding of what will most effectively and inconspicuously build alliances, promote participation, and instill commitment from people within his community. His information sharing is so careful and unobtrusive that others experience the connection within the community but are often unaware of his contribution to building it.

Bill often acts as a listening post to the members of his community without the need to give advice, pass judgment, or provide opinions. He will offer aid and assistance when asked but it takes the form of empathy and support rather than strategy and action plans. He encourages development and growth, and empathizes with those who are struggling. People respond to his personal engagement with them and the warmth and concern he shows them. Bill is rarely in a rush and always has time to interact with those who are troubled or just want to talk.

For Bill, the world is not a series of unrelated facts but a single whole full of patterns, impressions, and connections. He communicates his experience in stories that provide others with the necessary context but may alter or leave out factual points. His stories are a way to build personal connection and find common ground with others rather than a means to convey data and facts.

Bill is at his best smoothing the sharp edges of chaotic environments and erratic relationships. He builds a sense of cohesion within groups and creates a sense of group identity to which others willingly commit. He secures commitment to the community by thinking of others, making contact, doing favors, and staying in touch with all community members. It is important to him that outsiders accurately perceive community values, so he attends carefully to the image that his group projects and makes sure that it is consistent and appropriate.

His activities are ultimately focused on support and maintenance of his community. He is a keeper of community history and tradition and uses the history of the community to keep it grounded. He knows that understanding the past holds the key to providing continuity between the past, present, and future. He is the one who remembers everyone’s birthday, special occasions, and personal tidbits. He finds ways to stay in touch and often gives small meaningful gifts for no apparent special reason. These are his way of holding onto and building relationships and community.

About the Author:

Lynda-Ross Vega: A partner at Vega Behavioral Consulting, Ltd., Lynda-Ross specializes in helping entrepreneurs and coaches build dynamite teams and systems that WORK. She is co-creator of Perceptual Style Theory, a revolutionary psychological assessment system that teaches people how to unleash their deepest potentials for success. For free information on how to succeed as an entrepreneur or coach, create a thriving business and build your bottom line doing more of what you love, visit www.ACIforCoaches.com.

Gary Jordan, Ph.D., has over 27 years of experience in clinical psychology, behavioral assessment, individual development, and coaching. He earned his doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology – Berkeley.  He is co-creator of Perceptual Style Theory, a revolutionary psychological assessment system that teaches people how to unleash their deepest potentials for success. He’s a partner at Vega Behavioral Consulting, Ltd., a consulting firm that specializes in helping people discover their true skills and talents: www.aciforcoaches.com

Article Contributed By Sara LaForest and Tony Kubica

A preponderance of managers and supervisors are overly familiar with long sighs and disheartened groans from their employees when they introduce yet another organizational change or a new initiative. And in the aftershock of a devastating recession, the sighs and groans are turning into fear.

While supervisors do not have the authority to reject or the power to deflect organizational change, they do have the opportunity (and, we believe, the specific responsibility) to clearly and truthfully communicate the reasons for change.

Similar to a stool with three legs, three easy steps can greatly assist managers in creating a sound platform for transition during periods of change:

3 Ways Leaders Can Face Employee Resistance Head On to Make the Transition Easier for Everyone Involved…

1. Managers need to be convinced that the change is indeed needed. For example, the change is either opportunistic or required to ensure ongoing business viability and success. By focusing on what is needed, the options to create it (including an examination of risks or exposure) and the intended results from it, you will determine what change needs to
happen. You will see why the changes need to happen right now. You will able to develop a strategic plan on how the changes will occur.

And, you’ll be able to determine the value and impact that each change will bring to your organization.

2. Next, managers need to understand the change experience through the lens of their employees. Employees will be more open and willing to support change when they are given information that clearly addresses their fundamental questions. Honest, open, timely and truthful communication is absolutely essential during a transition. This means your
management team must agree on an accurate, forthright and unified response to the following five questions.

* What is the change? (Get specific)
* How was the decision made? (Include who made the decision)
* Who does it impact, and what does it mean to them?
* What is the value of the change to the organization and the employees?
(Focus on benefits and effects.)
* What are the next steps? (Describe the roles and actions.)

3. Lastly, management needs to establish effective ways for sharing (communicating) this information with employees through multiple channels. For example, if there are individual employees who will be impacted more than others (particularly if there are perceived negative implications), general courtesy and good ethic implies you meet first with these
employees. Share the same information but specifically describe how it affects them and their position. This should be done immediately before the departmental meetings. Smaller, team-style meetings provide a more open and comfortable environment for questions and discussion. All-staff meetings are also an option depending on the size of the organization
(such as those with less than 50 employees) and assuming that your message is not laden with “bad-news” to specific employees or groups whom have not yet heard the message. It is also helpful to consistently communicate the message of change as critical for the company, through written format, such as a company memo or newsletter, assuming the message is clear, straight-forward, and focused on the value of the change (benefits), or the sincere effort to prevail (i.e., a legitimate downsize or layoff) in times of challenge.

Managing the transition and implementing change is critical for organizations. Poor behavior, poor communications and poor execution will have long-term negative consequences for the organization.

Remember, change provides opportunity. So, help your employees embrace a new paradigm of change as an opportunity versus the widely held and limiting perspective of change as an unsolicited and undesirable mandate.

How you manage the transition will be remembered by the employees. Good behavior will clearly have positive long-term effects. Poor behavior will lead to contention, lack of trust, lack of productivity and turnover. So unless you goal is to close the business, poor change behavior is not a long-term success strategy.

Actions Have Consequences – Make Yours Positive Especially in the Time of Change

Keeping employees well-informed and engaging them will foster a climate of resiliency and it will build momentum that will advance your organization. This level of employee engagement is reinforced by what Geoff Colvin recently presented in the Fortune Magazine article, How are Most Admired Companies Different. Colvin mentions that champion companies “ensure they understand what employee engagement means, measure it and hold managers (not just HR staffers) accountable for it, and connect it to business objectives…” We strongly believe that change, whether for growth,
improvement or survival/reinvention is key to business productivity, efficiency and intimately, profitability.

About the Authors
Sara LaForest and Tony Kubica are management consultants and business performance improvement specialists with more than 50+ years of combined experience in helping organizations just like yours manage the transition. Failure to communicate head on is just one way to sabotage your business – get our complete “Self-Sabotage in Business White Paper” at: http://www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com/resources.php and uncover the common, subtle ways we harm our performance.

Article Contributed by Tami Stodghill

As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, my husband and I researched countless opportunities before landing on the one we finally decided on. For years we hesitated to make a move to be our own bosses. I suppose, at the time, some of that was fear of failure. However, a large portion of why we were afraid to move forward with our dream was that the opportunities we looked into somehow didn’t feel right or didn’t seem to fit. To a big degree, it was the free continuing training and mentoring that helped us finally make a decision, but it was also the “team” mentality that our mentors brought to the table that helped “seal the deal” so-to-speak. The comradery that a team offers in and of itself is valuable. But there are far more advantages to that approach in a business than the obvious.

Our team participates in nightly calls Monday through Thursdays and during that time, we accomplish a great deal. We are able to pose questions, get opinions from other business owners and offer input of our own. My husband and I call these valuable phone calls our B.S. sessions—Brain Storming Sessions. And out of those calls, we bring away a feeling of being part of a great company with top-notch people.

Additionally, we bring away beneficial insights as to how to more efficiently run our business, ways to market for low or no cost, ideas of new ways to gain exposure and recommendations for great websites and other information such as books or videos. If a member of our team is done with a particular book or movie, they offer to make it available to other members. That way, we all can share materials with a minimum of investment. We also role play with one team member being a prospect and another being the business owner. This lets us get genuine feedback on what we might say in a particular situation with a potential client.

We discuss important aspects of the company we all are members of—things that separate it from other opportunities out there. This also gives us added value in what we can share with prospects. The members of our team, obviously, all have different backgrounds, come from different places and possess different levels of experience and skills. In a lot of cases, this is just what we need as new team members are coming aboard all the time and it gives them the opportunity to hear many owner’s thoughts and experiences and what has and hasn’t worked for them. It also gives the team members a chance to be exposed to additional uplifting attitudes and serves to reinforce what is important in any small or home-based business.

Each team member pitches in in different areas. Some will offer to speak on an area of marketing they are exceptional at, others will offer ways they have managed to be successful with advertising and still others will lead a call on how the program that we sell has helped them personally. We also discuss co-op marketing opportunities and any of us who want to be a part of it can opt in. This can extend your reach with minimal investment in many areas of marketing. All of the input is priceless to us in our day-to-day operation of our business and we are always happy when we can bring something to the table as well. I should state that these calls are not mandatory in our business. They are strictly on a participate if you want to basis. But there really isn’t a single team member who misses out on those calls barring some emergency or prior important family commitment. We all look forward to them and have come to think of the team members as friends as well.

If you are looking for an opportunity, I highly recommend you choose one that offers this same “team” mentality. If you are already a home business owner, maybe you can suggest this type of participation from others who are working in the same business. It is incalculable in it’s value and presents a fresh mindset to you daily. If you can add this to your home business experience, you will find that being able to touch base with others and share experiences, ideas and approaches, as well as the sense of comradery, is a bonus you will find immeasurable.

About the Author

Tami Stodghill was the Press-Relations manager, for a world-wide extensible-technology distributor based in London and the US for 20 years. She was also a freelance writer for several industry publications and is now a home-based business owner with WMI. She makes her home in Page-Lake Powell, Arizona, in the summers and Palm Harbor, Florida in the winters where she enjoys boating and reading, camping, hiking and meeting new people. She runs a blog site exclusively to offer tips for success for any small or home-based business.

Article Contributed by Skip Weisman

Upon completing a recent project I took my client to lunch to thank him for his business. We reminisced about how we first met at my End Procrastination NOW! Workshop and how he realized at that time he was tired of tolerating things in his business.

Among the problems with which he was becoming increasingly frustrated were senior team members and frontline employees who…

• Were not taking responsibility for their jobs
• Needed constant prodding to get things done
• Were not responsive to client requests
• Did not return phone messages
• Were throwing their fellow employees “under the bus”
• Were having shouting matches in the office and on project sites
• Using profanity when communicating with co-workers, clients and vendors
• Procrastinated on following through on business opportunities
• Were showing up late or leaving early with no explanation
• Had negative attitudes
• Complained about customers and co-workers
• Were “disappearing” during the day

I began my project searching for the real underlying cause of these issues by:

• Interviewing the entire staff of 25
• Holding a series of focus groups
• Observing interactions and conversations between the business owner and his people.

What I learned in just two weeks could fill a book.

My new client was violating virtually every leadership communication mistake. To simplify the project I categorized them into what I now call “The 7 Deadly Sins of Organizational Leadership Communication:”

• Communication Sin #1: Lack of Specificity - This causes people on the receiving end of a communication to have to mind-read or guess as to what is being requested of them. Details are left out or are at best, vague. The recipient for many reasons fails to ask follow up questions to get specifics and have to figure it out on their own.
• Communication Sin #2: Lack of Focus on Desirable Behaviors - People are great at saying what they don’t want or what they don’t want others to do, but have challenges identifying the behaviors they want instead. Where your focus goes, grows. As such, people are getting more of what they don’t want because they continue to focus on it.
• Communication Sin #3: Lack of Directness - This is where people in organizations go behind the backs of their co-workers, peers, bosses and subordinates with water cooler gossip. Another example is the leader who tries to fix a problem that should be addressed to one person but calls a team meeting to offer a blanket directive. A third is when co-workers tell managers the mistakes co-workers make hoping to make themselves look good at the expense of someone else.
• Communication Sin #4: Lack of Immediacy - This is procrastination. This is when communication is avoided because the conversations are difficult and leaders don’t know how to approach the offending party, so they choose not to.
• Communication Sin #5: Lack of Appropriate Tone - Ever had someone in a professional setting raise his or her voice at you in a condescending or threatening manner? How about responding in a sarcastic manner? These are just two of the ways inappropriate tone ruin relationships and trust in company cultures.
• Communication Sin #6: Lack of Focused Attention - In this day of technology and multi-tasking too many office conversations occur passing in the hallway, while one person is checking/responding to e-mails on their smart phone, or talking to us while on hold waiting for someone they will likely deem more important once they come on the phone. This fosters disrespect and low trust in organizations.
• Communication Sin #7: Lack of Respectful Rebuttals - This may be the most common, yet subconscious of all seven leadership communication sins. It’s the conversations when someone agrees or provides positive feedback in the first part of their sentence, only to be followed by “but.” After the “but” comes the other shoe and you end up feeling misled and unfulfilled.

These behaviors had caused significant damage to my client’s 25-year-old, $15 million business with 25 employees over the past ten years. My client actually estimated that allowing these communication issues to build up over ten years had cost him about $5 million.

That’s real money for some people.

If you are making these same leadership communication mistakes I invite you to go to www.HowToImproveOrganizationalCommunication.com and get my free special report “The 7 Deadly Sins of Organizational Leadership Communication” where I will show you how to fix these sins and build a championship organization.

About the Author

Skip Weisman of Weisman Success Resources, Inc. of Poughkeepsie, NY (www.WeismanSuccessResources.com) works with organizational leaders to improve personnel, productivity and profits by helping them “Create a Champion Organization,” one that communicates effectively and takes action with commitment towards a shared compelling vision. His latest White Paper Report is “The 7 Deadly Sins of Organizational Leadership Communication” available free at www.HowToImproveOrganizationalCommunication.com

Article Contributed by Tami Stodghill

If your goal is to make a million dollars, then you mastermind with millionaires. If your goal is only to make $50K a year, then align yourself with people who make $50K a year. It’s true. There is a reason those people who are immensely successful are. They are involved with quality products, in a growing company, with people who are interested in changing other people’s lives as well as their own. And in doing that, they continue to experience success. Is that always the case? No but then those people that are in it to line their own pockets exclusively sometimes tend to burn out quickly and find their prospects drying up over time. They aren’t in it for the right reasons. It’s that simple.

When we got into this business, it was our goal to just replace our income we had in our jobs so we could quit. We didn’t hate our jobs, but we were working 50+ hours a week, taking no vacations or holidays to speak of and were pretty much capped out on income. We knew that we would be “stagnant” so-to-speak and that we wanted to change and improve our lives. The couple who introduced us to our opportunity were genuinely supportive, supplying the information we needed to make an educated decision as to whether it was right for us. There was no pressure and our endless questions didn’t tire them or make them eventually avoid our calls. See they knew we had family, and responsibilities and were nervous about making such a substantial change in our lives. And they guided us through that change, helping us to realize our dream. Did that change their lives? Sure it did. But it did so as a result of offering us the ability to change ours.

When my husband and I return a call to a prospect that has contacted us in response to our marketing efforts, we stop and always take a moment to remind ourselves that we need to help that prospect find out if what we can offer them, in the way of a business opportunity, will assist them in changing their life. Because it’s a fact that any prospect that contacts you is looking for something. Some will be looking for something they can start immediately and make an income as quickly as possible. For them it is time-critical. Maybe they lost their jobs, or are losing their home, or have mounting medical bills or can’t afford daycare to work outside the home. But others are just looking to add income or change jobs. For them, the urgency isn’t there. However, they ARE looking for something or they wouldn’t have contacted you. It’s your responsibility to find out if your opportunity will help them find that something.

The opportunity we decided on was based on several factors. The product was timely for sure. It offers a program to help people eliminate debt, create wealth and change their lifestyle. Plain and simple. And we knew in today’s economy we would be able to offer people a solution that would, if they followed the program, do just that. But we also knew that the company was very interested in their consultants, welcoming input and involving them in day-to-day training and tools to help those consultants continue to experience success. Every company should be of that mindset. It’s good business and it’s recognizing that it takes good people to have a good business. Align yourself with a good product, service or opportunity to sell. then focus on helping other people reach their dreams. THAT is your top priority.

In summary, if you approach your business from a “giving” and “grateful” attitude and perspective, it will come back to you. No question about it. You make every call to your prospects asking yourself what your opportunity (or service or product) can bring to their lives. And in doing so, you will help them to discover that it’s just what they are looking for.

About the Author

Tami Stodghill was the Press-Relations manager, for a world-wide extensible-technology distributor based in London and the US for 20 years. She was also a freelance writer for several industry publications and is now a home-based business owner with WMI. She makes her home in Page-Lake Powell, Arizona, in the summers and Palm Harbor, Florida in the winters where she enjoys boating and reading, camping, hiking and meeting new people. She runs a blog site exclusively to offer tips for success for any small or home-based business.