PEOPLE TODAY ONLY BUY WHAT MAKES SENSE.  . . . Don’t believe it!  by Hal Alpiar Excerpted from comments by Hal Alpiar published in today’s issue of  COMMUNICATION EXPRESSWAY ISSN: 1544-8312 Better Business Communication Judy Vorfeld – www.ossweb.com March-April-May 2010 – Issue # 74...

In HANDWRITING? (What a novel idea!) by Hal Alpiar       For those of you out there who can still actually write with a pen and paper, consider yourself in possession of a unique skill (even if your handwriting resembles the scrawl of your favorite nearby brain surgeon, or your neighbor’s cocker spaniel . . . probably can’t tell them apart! Uh, the writing).      And you can be assured your handwriting is a skill that’s underused, especially if you own or manage a business or are in professional sales. I lump those entrepreneurial and sales careers together because if you own 0r manage a business, you sell. And if you’re in sales, you own or manage a business.      So here’s the thing: AIN’T NOBODY HARDLY WRITES NOTHIN’ NO MORE.      Don’t believe me? Just look around and what do you see? PCs, Laptops, Cellphones, BlackBerries,...

by Hal Alpiar The farther apart we go, the closer we need to be.                                                                 As time and technology continue to stretch the great divide they’ve created between human beings . . . and personal relationships become less personal . . . the importance of common sense and common courtesy rises to the surface with more pronounced impact than ever before.      The HR and sales management rule of thumb, “Praise in public and criticize in private” has — for example — no less common sense meaning now, with increased communication reliance on emails and text...

C’mon Congress, EARN YOUR KEEP! by Hal Alpiar      We The People — the business owners and operators and managers and entrepreneurs and sales professionals — of the United States of America need to vent!      We would like to understand how it could be possible that you, the Congressional Representatives of the geographic districts that our business interests occupy, are at the doorstep of foregoing a national budget this year. PLEASE explain.      For the benefit of those not yet up to speed on this issue because you’ve been struggling with your own budgets, The Hill newspaper has just proclaimed that Congress may fail to even try to pass a budget this year because the Congressional majority claims that “they’ve pushed too many tough votes through the House to force another one before Election Day.”      Rarely do I have much good to report coming out of...

You REALLY Outdid Yourself This Time! by Hal Alpiar                    Have you ever equated owning and managing a business with being in a race? Aren’t most of us in fact so busy galloping over, under, and around the 37 zillion entrepreneurial business obstacles-to-success, that we seldom make the time to assess our own progress? When did we even come to appreciate what market position we’re in, let alone what racetrack we’re on?      I was reminded yesterday by the simultaneous running of The Preakness (horse race), and The Dover Downs (NASCAR) Race Weekend of how rare the occasions are that we business owners race around and soundly outperform our own and others’ expectations.  How evasive that winner’s circle can be when we just charge forward with our heads down!      Don’t we ALWAYS outperform...

"Hot Diggity, dog-diggity, BOOM, what you do to me..." --PERRY COMO [Yeah, I know; he was before your time]   by HAL ALPIAR www.TWWSELLS.com                                                                                                If you’re not celebrating your customers (clients/patients) regularly, it may be time to question priorities. In case you missed this week’s past blog post reference, it costs five (5) times as much money to get a new customer as it does to keep an existing...

Your Lifestyle Runs Your Business by Hal Alpiar                                            Remember the reason you decided to start, and run or manage your own business? Odds are it had more to do with what you wanted for a lifestyle than you probably recall. And I’ll bet your decision was accelerated by the lifestyle conflict you were having with the person you reported to or the organization you served . . . likely it was both!      Just the fact that you reported to anyone was probably grounds enough for you to want to set sail into uncharted seas. How do I know that? I’ve spent most of my life being an entrepreneur, coaching entrepreneurs, and teaching entrepreneurship. We share common distaste for indulging in...

by http://www.halalpiar.com/author/hal/";>Hal Alpiar                           You are taking the leap with a full plate in hand.        Imagine a waiter balancing a tray full of dinners on one hand and carrying a “table jack” with the other, while deftly jumping across a six-foot moat into a flame-edge-bordered room packed with ravenously hungry people, and no idea of who ordered what.        Whew!        Well, if the guy is the owner of the restaurant, odds are the right people will get the right food, others will get some complimentary food with appreciative remarks and everyone will end up coming back.        If it’s a giant chain restaurant, the wrong people will get the wrong meals, nobody else will be acknowledged and the only...

Visions and Missions and Thrusts, Oh Boy! . . . by Hal Alpiar       A “Vision Statement” addresses the ultimate objectives or finish line of your business pursuits, and can serve to point your business in a meaningful direction.      A “Mission Statement” underscores commitment to move toward that finish line, and usually suggests or outlines the pieces of strategy your business needs to follow to get where you want to go.      Great, right? Business owners need all that stuff to pump up the troops and prompt droves of prospects –like Clark Kent peeling off the suit and glasses to burst on the scene as Superman– to run to the cash register and become instant paying customers, right?      Here’s how I size up my own training/coaching/consulting prospects: those who gush forth their vision and mission statements at every turn need my help;...

     “LIFE IS GOOD!” says the shirt. What says you? “Bah, humbug!”?                                           Why “Bah! Humbug!”?  Because life, I’m convinced, as I once again reflect on my birthday, is not a commodity that’s just “good” all by itself.  Life is neither good nor bad.  It simply is.  And each of us chooses to make the experience of life a good one, a bad one, or something in between.       The point is that behavior is always and everywhere a matter of conscious or unconscious choice.  “Good” and “bad” and “in-between” is never dropped on us from the ceiling or the sky; it is not...

SALES AIN’T GONNA COME LOOKIN’ FOR YOU! 27th April 2010 by Hal Alpiar under Featured        Whatever it is that you’re looking for —money, health, fitness, sex, happiness, security, employment, religion, fame, more sales— is just around the corner. But, without a periscope, you’ll never see it.  And that’s a good thing because to get where you want to go, you need to stop looking at “the where” and start focusing on “the getting.” Getting where you want to go doesn’t happen just because it’s something you want. Desire is indeed critical to success, but achievement requires proper goal-setting and hard work as well. Many people who fail in life may very well be extremely hard workers. It’s very hard work to shovel in circles, no matter what you’re shoveling. More often than not, failure to achieve comes from misdirected or circular goal-setting. Most...