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Create a Magic Connection with Clients, Leads, and Business Associates -- Part II
Part I of this article explored how Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) pinpoints ways to gain instant rapport with clients, leads, and business associates, and more specifically, how we can use physiology, matching and mirroring to create instant magic communication.Part II examines how NLP uses tonality and words to establish rapport.TONALITYWhile physiology accounts for 55% of communication among humans, tonality accounts for 38%. Most people have had the experience of someone saying, “I’m fine. Nothing’s wrong.” While the words on the page seem to indicate that this person doesn’t have a problem, the tone used speaks louder than the words. Without tone the words suggest that the speaker doesn’t have a problem. Consider irony and sarcasm; both are communicated through tonality. If a person says, “I’m fine. Nothings wrong,” in a pleasant voice, she creates a different meaning than if she says the same words though clinched teeth and a low angry tone, or with a flippant tone. Someone yelling “I’m not mad,” isn’t convincing. If this happens in a sitcom, we laugh. In real life, we dismiss the words and read the meaning from the tone of voice. Often tonality is more subtle than these examples, but still a powerful communicator. Boredom, excitement, anger, melancholy, disbelief, questions, enthusiasm, honesty are more often communicated through tone, rather than words.When talking on the phone, it is crucial to be aware of tonality. In a phone conversation, both people are communicating via their tonality, often unconsciously. The business person that wants to create magic and rapport doesn’t leave

and is kept by the University.

There are about fifteen schools of ethics. Including minor variations there are untold numbers. After reviewing many of the mainstream schools, I can honestly say I have little idea of what they are talking about except for Utilitarian Ethics.

Fool that I am, I delved into Utilitarian Ethics as it made sense to apply it to my life style.

My ethical system is based on Utilitarian Ethics: the doctrine that what is useful is good, and consequently, that the ethical value of conduct is determined by the utility of the result. Loosely put, its proposition is that the supreme objective of moral action is the achievement of the greatest good for the greatest number. This objective is also considered the aim of all legislation and is the ultimate criterion of all social institutions including businesses.

Like all other ethical systems, it fails if you expect it to solve all ethical problems. No one ethical system can solve a wide range of problems ranging from government to business to individual ethical questions.

Travel Expense Reports
Travel expense reports are the records of the travel and expense (T&E) spending of the employees of business organizations. Indeed, travel and expense spending is the third largest but controllable cost after salaries of employees and data-processing costs of an organization. Every business traveler has to submit expense report to the Accounts Department of his company for claiming reimbursement. Almost all organizations, whether business or service, have their own formats of travel expense reports to be filled out and submitted by the employees at the end of their trips. Along with the submission of the report, an employee has to submit the receipts and vouchers of his expenses.However, some companies may not insist on the receipts if the total claim is less than certain amount. If the employees meet the expenses by credit card, the statement will serve as an evidence for claiming that amount from the employer. If the employee submits the travel expense report online, then he can attach electronic receipts. Generally for frequent business travelers, it is useful to submit T&E reports online to save time. Nowadays, companies are using expense report software to enrich the process of submission, approval and reimbursement by reducing the costs involved at the same time.The travel expense report should include the details about the full name of the employee, his designation and level, purpose, dates and locations of travel, list of all the expenses, advance amounts taken by the employee, if any, attachments of all the vouchers and receipts, preferable mode of payment to the employee and signatures of both the t

First, a definition of Ethics: principles of human duty, rules of conduct and the duty of being honorable . Simply put: Being ethical is doing the right thing.

Much is said about Ethics and we all agree we have them. But just what is “them?” Lets tackle the business ethics first for it is simple and straight forward. The problem comes when you are asked by your supervisor to do something that you are not sure if it is the right thing to do.

There are two parts to the business ethical question:

What to do when you are asked to do something, would your action be ethical? When you personally have to make decisions: How do you make them ethically?

Following Orders

This part is simple. You must understand your loyalties:

Be loyal to yourself.
Next, be loyal to the company
And finally, be loyal to your supervisor.
Remember the sequence: Yourself, the company and then your supervisor.

Texas Instruments has a simple three-step rule to follow if you question the ethical merits of a directive:

If you know it is wrong, simply don’t do it.
If you are not sure, ask.
Keep asking until you get an answer.

What if you are asked to do the unethical and there is no way out? You should always have “Go to hell money” available to say just that. Go to hell and let the chips fall where they may. Resigning is far superior to lowering your standards.

Making Ethical Decisions

This is a short article I wrote when I was studying ethics. First a brief history, followed by a brief outline of the ethical school I live by (Utilitarian Ethics) and then the “how-to” of making ethical decisions. It is an easy read as Word rates the article as suitable for grade eight readers.

Those who specialize in the study of and write about ethics are called Ethicans. By any definition they are a strange lot. Their main occupation is criticizing other ethicans and every ethical school of thought except the ones they favor.

Ethicans attempt to create an ethical school that applies to every occasion. The search is for a unifying ethical system is much like the search for the unifying theory of physics. It may happen in physics but not in ethics. Ethics is an emotional identity attempting to present itself as a logical and rational discipline. It fails miserably.

In addition, the ethical thinkers are not logical thinkers. They squabble amongst themselves and pass themselves off as great thinkers. If you want to read classical examples of poor writing, corrupt logic and pettiness, read the classical ethical writers. Yet they were brilliant.

For example, John Stuart Mills (1806-1873), regarded as the great proponent of Utilitarian Ethics was brilliant. By the age of seventeen he had completed advanced studies in Greek literature and philosophy, chemistry, botany, psychology and law. As a member of the British parliament he was considered a radical, as he supported such outrageous measures as public ownership of natural resources, equality for women, compulsory education, and birth control. He was one of the founders of the women’s suffrage movement.

His 1863 essay on Utilitarian ethics is regarded as the cornerstone of the Utilitarian principles. It is a disgraceful example of writing. For example the opening sentence is sixty-two words long. And things only get worse. Word processing grammar checkers get serious indigestion trying to analyze it.

Since 1863 I doubt if a dozen people have read the 24,000 word document from start to finish. I am not one of them. It is a masterpiece of confusion, bad grammar, and poor punctuation while making little sense. The concept is correct, but Mill’s explanation is so inept, it borders on the criminal.

In truth, the concept can be well expressed in less than five hundred words. Throw in a few examples and two thousand words would be about right. Strange, that is about the length of this essay.

I said they were crazy lot. Consider the founder of Utilitarian Ethics, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). He was quite a fellow: he was a child prodigy, reading serious works at age three, playing the violin at age five, and studying French and Latin at age six. He entered Oxford University at age 12, studied law, and was admitted to the bar. Quite a fellow.

In 1771, thirty years before the industrial revolution, Jeremy Betham invented the Panopticon. A Panopticon was to remove all privacy from prisoners by placing them behind a transparent wall encircling a guard tower.

Jeremy was so impressed with his invention he was determined to have a Panopticon as his casket and be place on public display. Certainly and odd request. But there is a difference between being odd and being disgusting.

Ladies, if you are a bit squeamish you may not want to hear this so please close your eyes. In accordance with his wishes, his body was dissected before his friends. His skeleton, fully clothed and provided with a wax head (the original being mummified), is kept in a glass case at University College, which he helped to found. He may be viewed on the Web with the picture updated every fifteen minutes.

His head was embalmed and is kept by the University.

Fool that I am, I delved into Utilitarian Ethics as it made sense to apply it to my life style.

Lead Gathering at Trade Shows
The primary reason to exhibit in a trade show is to generate sales leads or contacts for your company. So why is it that the majority of trade show exhibitors say that lead gathering and follow up is the biggest area of improvement needed? The reasons can vary greatly depending on the organizations; however some good up-front planning for both lead generation and follow-up will help alleviate many of the problems that organizations face in making trade show exhibiting successful.Lead Generation PlanningThe key to obtaining leads that can be turned into sales calls (and subsequently sales) starts with a good Lead Retrieval System. Most trade shows make good lead retrieval systems available to exhibitors at a very reasonable rate. These systems generally scan an attendee's badge or card, log the information into a database, and print a hard copy. What they do not do, however, is electronically log additional information that your booth staff may gain in a conversation. So how do you make it worthwhile? A good way to make the electronic information valuable is to review the hard copy printout while your visitor is in the booth, and use it to make any notes about your conversation that will be helpful in the follow-up phase. Be sure to write legibly…back at the office you may not remember your conversation!Another way to obtain contact names and numbers is the "fish bowl" approach. And although this provides quantity in leads, it does not provide quality. Sales people have little motivation to follow-up on these leads, as they do not contain details about the prospect or needs.Tips on Obta

o say just that. Go to hell and let the chips fall where they may. Resigning is far superior to lowering your standards.

Making Ethical Decisions

In truth, the concept can be well expressed in less than five hundred words. Throw in a few examples and two thousand words would be about right. Strange, that is about the length of this essay.

His head was embalmed and is kept by the University.

Fool that I am, I delved into Utilitarian Ethics as it made sense to apply it to my life style.

How to Escape the Normality Trap
Nobody notices normal.Not anymore, at least.Fifty years ago? Maybe.But this is 2007. Our culture is crowded. It is cluttered. It is LOUD!Creating products, ideas, philosophies and brands that are normal is like asking customers to find a needle in a stack of needles.Here’s why this is happening:1. The Time-Choice Paradox. There’s entirely too much stuff out there. Too many products. Too many blogs. Too many service providers. Too many options. Too many choices. And this trend creates the ultimate irony: with every new choice comes less time in which customers have to make it.See, several decades ago, people weren’t as rushed. But then again, they didn’t have 97 kinds of energy bars to choose from.LESSON LEARNED: the competition is fierce. Stand out or get counted out.2. Changing Expectations. The absolute minimum of customer expectations is radically higher than it used to be. (You can thank the Internet for this one.) Think about it. The luxuries we experience daily were unimaginable fifty years ago: instant access to unlimited information, 24-7 shopping options, overnight delivery (God bless FedEx) and of course, mass-customization.As such, customers expect to talk to you (not a machine) right now. Oh, and whatever they’re buying, they want it their way - right now. So if you can’t provide those minimum requirements, expect to hear a hearty “Peace out!” from those would-be customers. Because as you learned from #1, there’s plenty of other websites they can go to. Right now.LESSON LEARNED: match your minimum leve

rs. Yet they were brilliant.

In truth, the concept can be well expressed in less than five hundred words. Throw in a few examples and two thousand words would be about right. Strange, that is about the length of this essay.

His head was embalmed and is kept by the University.

Fool that I am, I delved into Utilitarian Ethics as it made sense to apply it to my life style.

Brand Loyalty...Construction or Destruction Through Service and Value
How strong is your brand? Can your brand survive poor service or poor value? How you use or lose your customer value perception opportunities tell much about your style of leadership.Every point-of-contact you or your employees have with your customers is an opportunity to increase or decrease your customers’ perceived value of doing business with you. The key idea here is perceived value. No matter how important you believe customer service to be, it is nothing more than a conduit for customer perceived value.The crucial question to you, “Are you embracing, or squandering, your opportunities to deliver perceived value to your customers?” Too many business people today simply focus on customer service, erroneously believing that service is the end game. Further could be from the truth. Delivering customer perceived value is the end game for today’s successful businesses.A few years ago, I delivered a full-day partnering workshop for the management team of a nationally branded downtown San Diego hotel. The lead hotel executive indicated that he wanted to increase the average room night rate by about 12 percent. He suggested that better customer service was the answer to increasing room night rates.To the hotel executive’s amazement, I told his group that customer service was not the answer. In the hospitality industry, this is sacrilege! Customer service is simply a conduit to deliver perceived value. I continued to tell the group that their answer was to increase their customer’s perceived value of staying at their property. It’s the amplified customer perceived value that would build brand equi

out right. Strange, that is about the length of this essay.

His head was embalmed and is kept by the University.

Fool that I am, I delved into Utilitarian Ethics as it made sense to apply it to my life style.

Fostering Change In European Union
The year 2004 was an exceptional one for the European Union (EU) with the historic enlargement to include ten new member states and the signature in Rome of the Treaty establishing for the first time an EU Constitution. That momentum continued into the first half of 2005, marked by the beginning of the ratification process for the European Constitution.The results of the various ratification processes of the proposed EU Constitution, either through parliament or via a referendum, have varied from one country to another. The European Union has to go through a European context that has proven to be both eventful and tense over the last few months. In line with the post French and Dutch referenda studies, European citizens appear today to be more critical in their analysis of the European Union, without however calling into question either their membership, or the European construction itself. Nevertheless, certain indicators from the recent Eurobarometer survey (fall 2005) reveal significant changes in views and highlight just how necessary it is to bring European citizens and European institutions closer together. Thus, the focus is now on how the European Union will reach successfully its citizens and under which conditions this attempt will be more effective.Under this notion, it is interesting to consider the unquestionable fact that the Internet is changing the world we live in. It is a change no less significant than the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. Over the last two decades, information technologies and the Internet have been transforming the way companies do business, the way st

and is kept by the University.

Fool that I am, I delved into Utilitarian Ethics as it made sense to apply it to my life style.

Fortunately, I have serious limitations for which I am thankful. I seek answers to my problems and opportunities. I do not have the ability nor the need to solve such issues such as abortion, euthanasia, and suicide. Nor can I solve the problems of the world. As I said, they are beyond my capabilities and for that I am thankful for my limitations.

One beauty of Utilitarian Ethics is that it has only two definitions: Good and Evil. Good is defined as any individual’s good feeling ranging from pleasures of the flesh to extreme self-sacrifice. Between these extremes there are included such things as material rewards. Evil is defined as harm to any individual ranging from such minor irritants such as a sliver in the finger to the evils of Hitler. Again, somewhere in there is material loss.

One last consideration: morals. You come to the table with your morals and religious beliefs. Ethics does not teach or propose a moral credo. You are who you are. If you are morally corrupt, a thief or completely uncaring, ethics is of little use to you. The only way one can improve their moral values is probably through some form of revelation.

Living by an ethical system is not in conflict with your religion or lack of it. All the mainstream religions, whether based on love or law, urge you to be good to others while minimizing evil in all its forms. Ethics simply provides a method to assist you in achieving your religious obligations of doing the right thing while minimizing evil. A religious belief is not a requirement of being ethical.

Resolving ethical problems using Utilitarian Ethics has a logical almost mathematical, step-by-step approach to it.

Let’s assume you want to make a business decision. If it does not affect people, there is no ethical consideration. Ethics only concerns itself with people. That does not mean your can abuse animals. Nor does it permit you to burn down you house even if you own it. Wanton destruction is unacceptable.

Is slaughtering animals for human consumption ethical? How about using animals for testing which causes them pain? I have no idea how you feel about the subject. But I do know I could not be employed in such industries, yet I benefit from their practices. As I said, I have serious limitations of my thought processes when it comes to resolving such fundamental issues.

Fortunately all those tough problems do not face me. In truth, I am not sure I could face up to them let alone resolve them.

So on to the reality of everyday life:

Let’s assume we are contemplating installing some form of safety or pollution device.

We think of three possible methods, A, B, and C. And we throw in a fourth possibility D, simply doing nothing. We make a list showing all the benefits (Good) to both ourselves and others. Now consider disadvantages (Evil) to yourself and others. Evaluate both the good and evil, not just to us, but to everyone involved. Consider employees, the shareholders, suppliers, the community, and the government.

The first test is do you benefit from any evil side effect? The test is resolved by considering what, if somehow, the evil side effects did not happen, would you still benefit? If you would benefit only if the evil event occurred, then the act is unethical. It is unethical to benefit from some form of evil inflicted on others. This test quickly determines that theft, murder, cheating, and most forms of lying are unethical acts.

With the list made, consider what method has the least evils. Assuming all three methods meet your goals, only the method having the least evil is ethical. To select a method that does not minimize the evil consequences is unethical.

Let’s consider the ethical merits of laying-off people for lack of work. It happens all the time. Now lack of work can range from receiving fewer orders than expected to simply running out of money, i.e. a builder lays-off his construction workers because he has run out of money. The house is still there to be completed, but there is no money. Employees are certainly harmed by the layoff. We pass the first test, as we do not benefit from their hardship.

Now consider what happens if the layoff is not made. Eventually the company will lose money, become less competitive and the problems multiply for the lack of layoffs. The result can only be that many others such as the employees, suppliers, shareholders or the community will be seriously harmed when the business fails. However unpleasant, the layoff for lack of work is ethical, not nice, but ethical.

So the method is simple. Consider all the alternatives and select the one with the least harm to all. Easier said than done.

Time passes, the act is carried out, and you or someone else thinks of a better, less evil solution to the problem or opportunity. Was the original act ethical? Yes. You tried your best to be ethical. Not being clever enough is no sin. You must learn to live with and rejoice in God’s gift of your limitations.

More time passes. Given the identical problem there is no guarantee that the ethical decision you made in the past would be ethical now. Times change the priorities. What was important then may not be important now. What was a minor consideration then may be a major concern now.

In business we are trying to find the best balance for all: the employees, shareholders, customers, suppliers, gove

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More people are finding employment, yet worker discontent and frustration have become rampant in the professional arena. Find out the sources of this trend, and see what can be done to alleviate this phenomenon.

A variety of valuable tips regarding many aspects of starting a wholesale business in the UK. This advice could help you save 1000's and can provide genuine assistance to a entrepreneur just starting up.

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