Archive for June, 2010

by Andy Horner

Salespeople know summer has arrived when they hear their first customer’s “vacation” voice mail. It sounds something like this: “Today is the first day of June. I’m currently swinging in a hammock at the beach and will return some time in August. Please leave a message, though I probably won’t return your call until October because I’ll be replying to over 10,000 emails. Talk to you in the fall. Beep!”

With customers in and out, summer can be a frustrating time for sales, but it doesn’t have to be. If your sales slump during the sunnier months, you may profit best to switch to a new selling mode. With a Yes! attitude, hard work, and some smarts, you can make it your most productive time of the year!

Here are seven ideas to heat up sales during your summer:

1. Clean up your list. Summer is a great occasion, with selling a bit slower for many sales professionals, to update your contact list thoroughly. It will make your personal marketing and communication efforts more effective the rest of the year. It’s no fun, but rewards big! Quick tip: match your customers’ contact info in their most recent email signatures to their info in your contact manager.

2. Send a pre-vacation gift. Set calendar reminders a week and a half before your top customers leave on their vacations. When alerted, send each customer a greeting card with a Target gift card inside (Ace of Sales makes this easy). Wish them loads of fun and a great time with their family. When they return to a jam-packed in-box, guess who will get a response first?

3. Work LinkedIn. Add your top customers to your network. (Most will gladly connect with you!) Then write each of them a short recommendation – which is like gold to anyone on LinkedIn. Be careful not to sound like a kiss-up! Recommend them to others with specific compliments regarding their strengths. You’ll be surprised how many customers will message you back with gratitude regardless of whether they’re at the office or on a cruise.

4. Get your blog and ezine started. If your summers are slow, start writing at your local coffee shop. Crank out the content for your first blog article or ezine. The new surroundings, slower schedule, and caffeine could be just the thing needed to kick-start these two vital projects.

5. Send a vacation shout out. On your vacation, record a short video for your best customers. Use your exotic surroundings as a backdrop. Just say hi! Tell them where you are, that you hope everything is going well for them, and that you look forward to chatting when you return. Send it before you return and you’ll blow them away!

6. Record a summer video series. Start your own YouTube channel! Then, use your Flip video to record a series of videos (3-5) featuring yourself! Shoot the videos at casual settings – your back deck, a restaurant, a cafe, a park. Topics could include featured products, customer interviews, and “did you know’s.” Feel free to add a few personal notes. Send a video every week or every other week using an Ace of Sales Email Greeting with a link to each video.

7. Make the most of holidays. For many countries and cultures, summer holidays are few and far between. In North America, July 4th, Canada Day, and Cinco de Mayo are about it! Whatever summer holidays your customers celebrate, don’t miss the opportunity to reach out to them (and stand out from lazy competitors) with an Email Greeting or Greeting Card designed with a colourful image, your personal branding elements, and a friendly message. Your greeting will display that you’re the kind of relationship-focused professional who has their act together when others are usually tuned out

Andy Horner is the Product Manager for Ace of Sales. He has worked in sales and marketing for over twelve years. He specializes in the design and technology side of Ace of Sales development combined with relationship marketing and sales. His goal with Ace of Sales to create the best sales tool on the planet! To connect with Andy today, email andy@aceofsales.com.

by Sue Ricketts

Within days of Jack’s decision to stay with his sisters, some people came from the Bernardo Homes. They’d been sent by Mr. Cockburn, the stepfather who didn’t want the girls. There was a hearing and Granny Jones was declared too old and feeble to take care of three growing children. She had no means of support and Mr Cockburn would not provide any more. It was deemed that they needed to be given some skills so that they could survive.

Jack’s question was about whether they could be sent oversees to somewhere he had heard about. He had gone to the library and searched through books and newspapers for places where the “streets paved with gold” might be. He found a number of articles which spoke about a huge country in North America where there were no limits on what could be achieved. People willing to work hard and save could live in a paradise of plentiful food and many natural resources which would provide bounty for all. That place was called Canada.

He was assured that they had connections to Canada if that’s what was wanted, but first they had to be evaluated and each of them must learn a useful skill. Lucy and Winifred where sent to a girls home where they were taught sewing, cooking, housekeeping and mothering skills. Jack went to a boys home a few miles away where he was taught farming and money management as well as continuing in a full schooling program.

Every Sunday he walked the distance to visit his sisters who were now fourteen and eight. They were lonely and unhappy but had each other for one afternoon each week. It was Jack who kept bringing them stories about this wonderful place where they would be going, where they would be able to get rich and live well. It was all they had to believe in.

Granny Jones visited them once but they never saw her again and they were told that she died of a broken heart six months after they went to the orphanage. No reason to live, they said. She just faded away.

A great deal of paperwork was done and tests taken. One year later the girls were approved to come out to the New World to make their fortunes. Jack was devastated. He didn’t pass the health tests and it was deemed that he needed to spend a year or two on Jersey Island between France and England in the Channel. He was too frail to survive a Canadian winter.

He was allowed to accompany his sisters to Liverpool where they left on board a passenger ship to arrive in Halifax and eventually take a train to a city called Toronto in far off Ontario. Jack continued on his own to the south of England where he was put on a ferry boat which went to Jersey Island, his home for the next year and a half. There was a school there which taught English one day and French the next. There were many sports activities which he was encouraged to take part in as much as possible so that he would build himself up to be able to survive Canada. He pined for his sisters and worried about their fate. He missed Granny Jones with an ache that only someone alone can feel. There was no word about them all the time he stayed on Jersey.

Towards the end of his stay he took to sneaking out of school and hopping on the ferry which travelled from the island to St. Malo in France and then across to Southampton in England and back to Jersey again.

There were many tests to pass, reading, writing, farming, carpentry, but most important were the health tests which would allow him to come and find his sisters. He tried as often as the teachers and administrators would let him and became a bit of a joke. He’d finish them and fail and immediately sign up to take them again. Finally, finally came the day when he was told that he’d be shipped up to Liverpool and be able to go to Canada. But there was one more obstacle. He wouldn’t be allowed in unless he had a job to come to.

Jack had no connections in the place with streets paved in gold. His sisters had just disappeared and he didn’t know where they had gone in the huge place which he had seen only on maps. One of the other boys at school had the same burning ambition to get to Canada. Alfie Scattergood had an Uncle, well not really an Uncle but a good friend of his late parents who’d emigrated to Canada. They sent letters asking for recommendations and if he would undertake to find jobs for two strapping lads of 15. After months of waiting they finally received news of work for them both in Ontario. Jack was cheered that he would be near his sisters.

The day came when he went to the Bernardo home in London to pick up his kit. Everything had been made by Bernardo children in orphanages who had learned useful trades. There were 2 white shirts, 1 pair of short pants, 1 pair of long pants, 1 pair of work boots, 2 pair woollen socks, 2 sets of underwear, one bonnet and one short winter coat. They were packed in a small trunk which contained everything that he possessed in the world. The next stop was Liverpool and the ocean ship which brought him to Canada.

His first sight of Halifax didn’t provide the streets of gold but the boys didn’t notice as they began their great adventure on a huge train which was to bring them a very long way to their final destination at the Bernardo House in downtown Toronto in Ontario.

Three days travel finally brought them to Toronto. When they arrived they were told that they must stay there for two weeks before being sent out to their work placements in case they had picked up a disease on their way to the New World.. Jack asked about his sisters and was told that he would have to wait while they looked up the records as it was now nearly two years since they had passed through that place.

On a cool fall day Jack was told he would be going to a farm in the Caledon hills some distance from Toronto and Alfie was sent to another place called Huntsville were he would work as a plasterer. They vowed to keep in touch and write often and they did for many years through all sorts of trials and adventures.

The Caledon farm was certainly not easy street. Jack did get paid but he never went to school again, had to rent coveralls and winter clothes from the farmer and pay for his room and board. It took him nearly two years of saving in order to buy a bicycle which would let him go down to Bernardo House in Toronto to continue his search for the girls.

When he finally arrived he was told that Winifred was working up near Ottawa as a mother’s helper and Lucy had been sent to work in an orphanage in Holland Landing. He wrote long letters telling them both about his arrival and they planned a reunion.

Winifred had met a nice German fellow who work for the landowner who farmed where she worked and was planning to marry and move to a place called Kitchener. They would be close to each other again. She missed them both so much.

Lucy said that he couldn’t come just yet because they had a measles outbreak and the whole area was quarantined. She looked forward with joy and much happiness to seeing her big brother again. It had been lonely as she hadn’t seem Winifred since they left Bernardo House years earlier.

When the quarantine was finally lifted he quit the farm and rushed up to Holland Landing to meet the baby sister he hadn’t seem in four years. The officials at the orphanage took him in and informed him that his little Lucy had passed away the week before due to the measles. There would be no reunion there.

There was nothing for it but to get back on his bike and ride north and east for days to reach the small farm where he thought Winifred might be. This time he was very afraid to go down the lane. What would he find? Would fate spin the wheel again and bring disaster or joy?

A dusty farmer with a broad straw hat met him at the gate and asked what his business was? He had a really heavy accent and it was hard to tell what his age was because of the hat and bandana he wore over his mouth. It didn’t look like the fellow would let him in. Jack looked him in the eye as best he could and said he was there to visit his sister Winifred, whom he hadn’t seen since she left England many years ago. Suddenly the fellow removed his hat and stuck out his hand with a grin and a twinkle in his eye and said, “Jack you’ve finally come home. There’s a meal waiting in the house up there and I’m your soon to be brother-in-law, Lawrence.”

Just then the sun came out from behind the clouds and shone down the full length of the lane which had just been sprayed with oil to keep the dust down. It looked like it turned to gold all the way up the hill right to the farmhouse. Perhaps there really was a street paved with gold.

by Sue Ricketts

After learning of his Mother’s death from the Influenza, young Jack was stricken with fear. He and his sisters and brother were only step-children now to the rather stern Mr. Cockburn. Winifred Jane was twelve years old, Lucy Maude was six and Elijah James was ten. They all had very dark brown hair and the almost black, brown eyes of the true Welsh people. That had come to them through Granny Jones who was the matriarch of the family. It was she who brought her children to Newcastle to get away from the poverty and hunger of the Welsh mountain country after her husband died in a mining accident. Granny hadn’t known where to go but had a cousin who had moved to the north of England so that her husband could work in the mines. The cousin told her about a small colony of the home people living there. Through much hard work at the fish market she managed to raise three children, two boys and her beloved daughter, in the mean streets of Byker.

Both the boys left as early as they could. One joined the army and went out to South Africa to fight in the wars. He never came home again. The second son married a lovely Newcastle girl named Lucy and went out to Rhodesia as a Missionary to teach the natives about Christ. They picked the wrong time to go though. Life was very hard with food scarce and even though they were blessed with a dark-haired beauty of a little girl whom they named Jane, the venture was doomed from the start. They were all killed in one of the many uprisings which took place just around the turn of the century. Goodbye to the 19^th and hello to the 20^th.

Granny had seen such hardship in her life and now all she had left was her girl. Jane Jones, was a bit younger than the boys and became Granny’s main reason to live. Granny spoiled her and let her have her way, but she grew up to be a strong women who worked hard. Jane married a young man named Elijah and over the next 6 years they brought three children into the world. Elijah’s trade was boot making but as time went on and the children arrived, he decided to sign up on the fishing boats as there was good money to be made. He came home after an absence of over a year with the wasting sickness, diabetes, for which there was no cure. He brought some money with him but would never be able to work. Elijah passed away just before the birth of Lucy, their fourth child.

Jane returned to her job with the city tram service as soon as she could and now Granny Jones had another purpose. She cared for her grandchildren as babysitter and teacher and became the biggest presence in their lives.

Four years later, Jane married again to a widower who had two daughters of his own and they tried to blend their families together. They only had two years together when Jane passed away in the worldwide epidemic which took so many potential bright lights from the world.

With the death of her daughter, Granny Jones began to waste away. The light had gone out of her life. She was beaten and ready to give up. Never again could she muster the strength that she had shown all her life.

Now back to the story of the boy who dreamed of streets of gold. The step-father decided that since Granny Jones had cared for Jane’s children he would leave them there until he decided what should be done. That lasted for nearly two years during which time he sent small amounts of money to help out.

One day word was sent that the boys, Elijah James and Jack should come to meet Mr. Cockburn for an interview. Granny made sure that they put on their church clothes and had a bath before they went. Their boots were worn and had holes in the soles but they polished them until they shone. They must keep up appearances.

They walked a long way to Mr. Cockburn’s workplace and met him in an office near the docks. They weren’t invited to sit down, just stood in front of the desk and were told not to fidget because this would be the greatest opportunity of their lives.

“As you know, lads, I have no sons of me own.” he said in a gravelly voice which came from many years of unloading cargo from ships from all parts of the world. “I have a proposition for you both. If you will take my name, I will see to it that you get a trade and have a place to live until you can be on your own.”

Immediately, Elijah, who didn’t like school, agreed to this wonderful idea which would ensure that his future would be taken care of. Jack stood silent and said nothing.

“Why aren’t you answering, John, my boy? Don’t you want to be taken care of?” rumbled Mr. Cockburn.

“Don’t be stupid Jack. This is the easy road. You don’t have any other choices. Granny’s old and can’t go on forever.” said Elijah.

“Sir, please tell me what will happen to my sisters?” said Jack in his best grownup voice.

“Oh, well! I already have two girls and I don’t need more. I want sons to carry on my family name when I’m gone and I’ll take two of you to make sure that it does. The girls will go to an orphanage where they’ll be taught some skills. ” replied the raspy Mr. Cockburn.

Jack took his courage in hand and replied, “Mr. Cockburn, sir, the last thing I heard my Mother say to me was that I had to take care of the girls and see them to the place with golden streets. I’m going with them.”

by Dr. Ken M Keith

1.     People are illogical, unreasonable and self-centred

                          Love Them Anyway

 2.     If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives

                          Do Good Anyway

 3.     If you are successful, you will win false friends and enemies

                          Succeed Anyway

 4.     The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow

                          Do Good Anyway

 5.     Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable

                          Be Honest and Frank Anyway

6.     People favour underdogs but follow top dogs

                          Fight for the Underdogs Anyway

 7.     The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.

                          Think Big Anyway

 8.     What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight

                          Build Anyway

 9.      People really need help but may attack you if you do help them

                          Help People Anyway

 10.   Give the world the best tou have and you may get kicked in the teech

                          Give the World the Best You Have Anyway

Sue’s addition:

 11.    People reach a point where they think they know everything important

                          Go Ahead and Learn Anyway

 I’m so glad I did

Chapter 1

by Sue Ricketts

    It started with the day he fell from the coal pile.

     Granny Jones had asked eight year old Jack to go down into the dark cellar and fetch a scuttle of coal. The night would be cold and when his Mother came after work to pick the children up she would want a cup of tea and to sit in a warm place.

     Granny worried about his Mother as she hadn’t looked well that morning when she dropped them off before school. She left for her job on the trams which bustled along the streets of Newcastle before the sun got up. Her twelve hour shifts clipping tickets to ensure that passengers had paid their fares was not the problem. It was the cold weather and the open carriages with no protection from the winds and rain that caused the worry. There was also the rumour going round that this mysterious Influenza was killing people before anyone had a chance to realize how sick they were. They said it was caused by all the bombs going off on the continent. Or maybe it was the men living in filthy trenches. It would certainly be like the Bosch to create something like that and set it loose on their enemies. That’s why only the older two went to school that day. Granny kept the younger two at home.

     They’d had to wait a few days before the load of coal was delivered. Well, actually it had been nearly the whole month of November. This had to keep them through the whole winter and so it was carefully managed and rationed. Never waste anything was Granny Jones motto. She could squeeze a Pound Note until it bled sixpences! That’s what Mother always said with a laugh when she talked to Mr. Cockburn, their stepfather.

     The scuttle was big and awkward and had a small neck which made it hard to fill. Jack was slight and small for his age so the task took a long time. The cellar was two floors down and had no light. He had brought a candle and match with him. Only one match allowed! As he finished, Jack looked up to the top of the pile of coal and saw that the coal-monger hadn’t closed the latch on the window. Any of the neighbours could reach in and pinch their coal! That would be horrible and they’d go cold if it was left that way.

     There was nothing for it but for Jack to climb up the mound of coal and make sure the latch was secure. He made it up without the coal shifting and reached out and put the nail into the circle and twisted it round to make it tight so it wouldn’t come out. Jack turned to quickly as the candle blew out and the hill of coal moved. He lost his balance and slid down the pile. He couldn’t stop himself as there was nothing to grab on to. He hit the cold, cement floor head first.

     That’s where Winifred found him nearly an hour later and they rushed him along to the infirmary to have someone take a look at him. Young Jack didn’t waken for three days! When he did he was so excited that he just had to tell everyone about his dream. Well, to him it wasn’t a dream. It seemed so real that he could remember every detail for many years after-ward.

     This is what he told anyone who would listen. He had seen a bright flash of light and then walked through a very dark tunnel for what seemed a long time. Eventually he saw a light ahead and made his way to it. There were many tall buildings and horseless carriages everywhere. The sun was shining down on trees and flowers on a warm summer’s day. When he looked down at the roads they shone in the sunlight as though they were paved with gold. As far along the street as he could see it was golden. The streets seemed to be paved with gold.

     He heard a voiceand he knew it was his Mother speaking to him. “Jack, darlin’, this is the place where you’ll end up. It’s up to you to bring the girls here, too. Please don’t fail me. This is important.” He clung to the memory of that dream with every ounce of his being for a very long time. Even after the stony faced Doctor with the white moustache and goatee came and told him that while he had been knocked out something terrible had happened. Mother never came home. She began coughing blood on the job and they took her to a different hospital across the city. Despite their best efforts she had died on the same day and about the same time as Jack had hit his head.

     He believed in his dream even more. His Mother had given him a last mission to complete for her. How does an eight year old accomplish such a huge task?