8 Things Productive People Do During the Workday

Check this out:

8 Things Productive People Do During the Workday

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130515130419-5799319-8-things-productive-people-do-during-the-workday Sent from LinkedIn for Android

Sent from my Samsung Epic™ 4G Touch

ELDER BANKING...........Priceless!

Got this from my friend Mark...thought it was too damn funny not to share!



Shown below, is an actual letter that was sent to a bank by an 86 year
old woman.


The bank manager thought it amusing enough to have it published in the
New York Times.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Sir:

I am writing to thank you for bouncing my check with which I
endeavored to pay my plumber last month.

By my calculations, three nanoseconds must have elapsed between his
presenting the check and the arrival in my account of the funds needed
to honor it..

I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my entire
pension, an arrangement which, I admit, has been in place for only
eight years.

You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity,
and also for debiting my account $30 by way of penalty for the
inconvenience caused to your bank.

My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has
caused me to rethink my errant financial ways. I noticed that whereas
I personally answer your telephone calls and letters, --- when I try
to contact you, I am confronted by the impersonal, overcharging,
pre-recorded, faceless entity which your bank has become.

From now on, I, like you, choose only to deal with a flesh-and-blood person.

My mortgage and loan repayments will therefore and hereafter no longer
be automatic, but will arrive at your bank, by check, addressed
personally and confidentially to an employee at your bank whom you
must nominate.

Be aware that it is an OFFENSE under the Postal Act for any other
person to open such an envelope.

Please find attached an Application Contact which I require your
chosen employee to complete.

I am sorry it runs to eight pages, but in order that I know as much
about him or her as your bank knows about me, there is no alternative.

Please note that all copies of his or her medical history must be
countersigned by a Notary Public, and the mandatory details of his/her
financial situation (income, debts, assets and liabilities) must be
accompanied by documented proof.

In due course, at MY convenience, I will issue your employee with a
PIN number which he/she must quote in dealings with me.

I regret that it cannot be shorter than 28 digits but, again, I have
modeled it on the number of button presses required of me to access my
account balance on your phone bank service.

As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Let me level the playing field even further.

When you call me, press buttons as follows:

IMMEDIATELY AFTER DIALING, PRESS THE STAR (*) BUTTON FOR ENGLISH

#1. To make an appointment to see me

#2. To query a missing payment.

#3. To transfer the call to my living room in case I am there.

#4 To transfer the call to my bedroom in case I am sleeping.

#5. To transfer the call to my toilet in case I am attending to nature.

#6. To transfer the call to my mobile phone if I am not at home.

#7. To leave a message on my computer, a password to access my
computer is required.

Password will be communicated to you at a later date to that
Authorized Contact mentioned earlier.

#8. To return to the main menu and to listen to options 1 through 10

#9. To make a general complaint or inquiry.

The contact will then be put on hold, pending the attention of my
automated answering service.

#10. This is a second reminder to press* for English.

While this may, on occasion, involve a lengthy wait, uplifting music
will play for the duration of the call.

Regrettably, but again following your example, I must also levy an
establishment fee to cover the setting up of this new arrangement.

May I wish you a happy, if ever so slightly less prosperous New Year?

Your Humble Client


And remember:

Don't make old people mad. We don't like being old in the first place,
so it doesn't take much to piss us off.

WITH REGRET

WITH REGRET

We idolized and memorialized Whitney Houston, yet looked the other way concerning her well known substance abuse and tumultuous life with singer Bobby Brown.

Much, too much, was also made of Michael Jackson's death which also was caused by substance abuse.

Charlie Sheen is 45 and his story is all over the news because he is a substance abuser, an adulterer, sexually promiscuous and obnoxious.

Lindsay Lohan is 24 and her story is all over the news because she is a celebrity drug addict and thief.

Something as frivolous as Kim Kardashian'sstupid wedding [and short-lived marriage] was shoved down our throats, While........


Justin Allen 23
Brett Linley 29
Matthew Weikert 29
Justus Bartett 27
Dave Santos 21
Jesse Reed 26
Matthew Johnson 21
Zachary Fisher 24
Brandon King 23
Christopher Goeke 23
and Sheldon Tate 27...


Are all Marines who gave their lives last month for YOU. There is no media for them; not even a mention of their names.

Young Men who most likely came from rural America seeking a chance to better themselves and to serve this county.


Honor THEM by sending this on.

I did, will you?

Rest In Peace, and THANK YOU,TROOPS .

5 Key Ways to Improve Your Sales Call Results | Manta Sales Expertise Center

By Larry Prevost, ProspeX Sales Coach Last week, we held a sales coaching session with one of our sports clients. The topic of discussion was opening the sales call. The event reinforced the emphasis our organization places on the opening of the sales call and the importance of getting the prospect's attention immediately in this attention-starved age. In that session, participants performed an exercise where we presented them with an unknown situation as they initiated their call. When they opened their call, we "connected" them either with the gatekeeper, their target contact, or directly into voicemail. From there, they had to navigate their way to their target contact and deliver a request for a meeting. The results were inconsistent, yet enlightening. Some were able to navigate their way through the maze, reach their target audience and present their message. Some stumbled through the process but were able to salvage the effort and make it to the finish line. And some tangled themselves up right out of the gate. The exercise revealed the need to reinforce new behaviors--and that established communication patterns are difficult to break, especially the ones we learned early in life. We touched on a few of these points in the past, but after reviewing the exercise, we picked up a few more that may be of help to you in when initiating your sales process. Here are five ideas to keep in mind when you start a sales call: 1. No One Is Sitting by the Phone Waiting for Your Call Your prospects have a lot on their minds. In fact, the further up the decision-making chain you go, the more they are preoccupied with other issues. When you call, you are an unwanted interruption, sometimes even if you have taken steps to set up the call beforehand. There are a few exceptions to this. Your contact will be sitting by the phone waiting for a call: From a current client that has a major business support issue. From one of their team members establishing a conference call for a sales presentation to a major prospect. From a consultant or advisor whose opinion they value. There are probably other exceptions, but they will all have a couple of things in common. The person waiting for the call values the person or event they are waiting for, and somebody set up a time and day before the phone meeting. Your prospect is waiting for a valuable, planned-for event. Solution. If you are making a call to a potential sizable account, your best move is to establish a mindset of anticipation in your contact before you make the call. Just like the three examples above, your call has to be valuable from their perspective, and it has to be planned-for, both of which are difficult to establish when making prospecting calls. However, using online reputation management techniques, social media, and direct mail marketing, you can portray yourself as someone who has valuable insight. From there, you can initiate a conversation and ask for a phone or face-to-face meeting. 2. No One Cares Who You Are or Where You Work One of the challenges we saw in our exercise was how participants initiated the conversation when they got a live person on the phone. The most common opening was "Hi Bob. This is John Doe from Acme Rocket Packs. How are you today?" You probably learned this opening before you started your career and you've reinforced it every day you talk to other people. Since it is so common, the response you get is also common and boring. If you want to get a different response from your audience, do something different. Your target audience wants individual solutions that reflect their unique needs. They don't want the standard, one-size-fits-all approach. Using a common scripted opening is a sign that you didn't do your research and displays a lack of creativity Will there be times where you will want to open with a standard opening? Sure there are. However, you don't want to fall into a habit and use the same thing all of the time. Keep yourself engagde and you'll engage your target audience as well. Solution: When you make your call, open it with a colorful fact or statistic about their industry that will startle them. Open with a compliment on their position within the industry. Tell them something that is different from what they are accustomed to hearing and wake them up. Dry facts by themselves won't wake up your contact. A meaningless name won't shake them from their preoccupation either. The only way you'll shake them loose from the grip of preoccupation is by getting in their head and talking to them about their activity and interests. 3. Treat the "Gatekeeper" With Respect At one time, sales reps treated the "gatekeeper" as an obstacle they needed to overcome. The economics of the new millennium have changed that. Think like a business owner and review the economics. At this time, business owners are looking to streamline their processes and produce a profit while cutting costs. Would they really expand their payroll expense by hiring someone just to answer phones and route calls when a machine can do it at a fraction of the cost? If your target audience is high enough in the corporate ladder to have a gatekeeper, that gatekeeper is doing a lot more than just screening calls. Take some time to know them because that gatekeeper is a decision-maker, too. They are the people who decide where to route your calls. Solution: Develop your communication skills. Be polite, friendly and professional. Remember that you are there to conduct business. However, that doesn't mean you should be rude or dismissive for the sake of efficiency. Keep the level of conversation appropriate to the audience. Engage your gatekeeper and leverage their knowledge and expertise. If necessary, join a Toastmasters group and get some time speaking in front of a diverse group of people. You will quickly learn how to read your audience and gauge your presentations accordingly. 4. Expected Activities in Fact-To-Face Meetings Don't Always Migrate Well in Phone Meetings There are certain activities and procedures that we use when meeting people face-to-face. Little things like smiling, asking how the other person is doing, making small talk while asking business questions, and watching for their responses so you can respond in kind. We can do these in a face-to-face encounter because we are consuming and processing information from all of our senses simultaneously. In a phone conversation, however, we gather and structure information in a linear fashion. And all of it is auditory. The visual information is gone. Even in a video conference, the range of visual information we can gather from the periphery is limited to the narrow scope of the camera and is sadly lacking when compared to being present physically. Given these limitations, some of the communication processes that worked so well in a face-to-face meeting don't work as well or at all when conducted over the phone. For instance, when you meet someone at a networking event, you can use the opening, "Hi Bob. John Doe from Acme Rocket Packs." You are standing in front of them in their field of vision. You are looking at their face and they are looking at yours. However, you need to understand that the phrase didn't get their attention, your physical presence did. When you get on the phone where you can't leverage your physical presence, that verbal opening will cease to influence your contact. We use the same opening simply because it's something that we've always done. Solution: Rethink your phone communications and ask yourself: Do I have their attention? How can I get heir attention? How will I know when I have their attention? How can I say what I need to say to hold their attention? Don't count on what you've said in your face-to-face meetings to work for your phone communications. Most of the time, it won't. 5. Get Rid of Filler Words Another verbal habit that we heard from our participants was unnecessary words and verbal patterns. They used them primarily out of habit; to accommodate for feelings of fear, inadequacy, or to buy some think time. One of those words we looked at in a past article: the word "like." Another word we heard during this particular session was the word "great," used after every response that the prospect made. For instance: Jane: Bob. Jane Doe from Wyle E. Coyote Ball Bearings. How are you today? Bob: I'm doing all right. Jane: Great! Bob, do you have some time to talk today? Bob: Sure, I have a few minutes. Jane: Great! You have only a short amount of time to get your prospect's attention on the phone. Once you have it, you have to constantly work to hold it. Practice verbal brevity. Don't waste your time with words you don't need. Solution: Sit down with another member of your sales team. Deliver your sales call opening to them and have them listen for regular patterns and words that you are using as a crutch. Typically, these are words that make you feel comfortable but don't convey any value to your prospect. Then, have your partner give you a review at the end of your opening, identifying any patterns that detracted or slowed your presentation. Remember that this is not an exercise to see how quickly you can deliver your opening. It's about effectively conveying your value and removing anything that will get in the way of that message. Check your habits, get rid of the ones that aren't necessary, and convey what you mean with verbal brevity.

SCAM ALERT!

Anfi, Inc.
1310 MLK Drive
PO Box 3427
Bloomington, IL 61702
(888) 804-2409
www.afnicollections.com

If you get ANY letters from this company its a scam!  Don't pay them a single cent!!  As funny as it is, I just got a letter in the mail from these guys telling me that I owe $322.19 for a past due T-Mobile bill.  I've NEVER had a T-Mobile account...EVER... I hate T-Mobile... HAHAHA!!  I'm thoroughly in love with Sprint and would never cheat like that!!  :-)  SO, I pulled a tri-merge credit report (a report from all 3 credit bureau's) and surprise, surprise, NOTHING!  So I looked up this sketchy letter and found lists and lists of pages of people freaking out about these scam-douches...



http://afnifraud.blogspot.com/
http://www.debtconsolidationcare.com/collection-agencies/afni.html
http://complaintwire.org/Complaint.aspx/50RBX5dWYwDsfAjJioP9qQ
http://scamadvocates.com/19-Afni-Collections.html
http://www.ripoffreport.com/Search/Afni.aspx



Someone needs to go out to these guys and punch them in the ear...

In short, DON'T PAY THEM!!

Hugs and Kisses
Mikey Mike

Let Us All Speak Up!

Warren Buffett, in a recent  interview with CNBC, offers one of the best quotes about the debt ceiling:


"I could  end the deficit in 5 minutes," he told CNBC. "You just pass a  law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of  GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for  re-election

The 26th amendment (granting the  right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only
3 months & 8 days  to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in  1971...before computers, e-mail, cell phones, etc.

Of  the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or  less to become the law of the land...all because of public  pressure.Warren Buffet is asking each addressee to forward this email  to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask  each of those to do likewise.

In three days, most  people in The United States of America will have the message.  This is one idea that really should be passed  around.

Congressional Reform Act of 20111. No  Tenure / No Pension.
A Congressman collects a salary while in  office and receives no pay when they are out of office.

2.  Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social  Security.
All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move  to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow  into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with  the American people. It may not be used for any other  purpose.

3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan,  just as all Americans do.

4. Congress will no longer vote  themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower  of CPI or 3%.

5. Congress loses their current health care  system and participates in the same health care system as the  American people.

6. Congress must equally abide by all laws  they impose on the American people.

7. All contracts with  past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12. The  American people did not make this contract with Congressmen.  Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in  Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers  envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their  term(s), then go home and back to work.

If each person  contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three  days for most people (in the U.S. ) to receive the message. Maybe  it is time.

THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!!!!!

If  you agree with the above, pass it on. If not, just delete. You  are one of my 20+.. Please keep it  going.

CNN Breaking News

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he's canceling July 4 recess for Senate to deal with the debt ceiling crisis.

Lawmakers must raise the nation's $14.3 trillion debt ceiling by Aug. 2. Otherwise, the Treasury will run out of money to pay the nation's bills in full and on time.

Republicans have demanded that any deal to raise the debt ceiling include deep spending cuts, but they have been reluctant to consider measures favored by Democrats that would increase revenue.

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Click here to get your 2011 score instantly for $0!
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CNN Breaking News

The Supreme Court put the brakes on a

massive job discrimination lawsuit against mega-retailer Wal-Mart

Stores, Inc., saying sweeping class-action status that could potentially

involve hundreds of thousands of current and former female workers was

simply too large.

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Click here to get your 2011 score instantly for $0!
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::ill Will Press:: NEUROTICALLY YOURS CARTOON: COFFEE-HOUSE PROPAGANDA

::ill Will Press:: NEUROTICALLY YOURS CARTOON: COFFEE-HOUSE PROPAGANDA

Qualifying for MDRT's Top of the Table Using Disability Insurance: Free NAIFA Members-Only Webinar

Sent from my Samsung Epic™ 4G

-------- Original message --------
Subject: Qualifying for MDRT's Top of the Table Using Disability Insurance: Free NAIFA Members-Only Webinar
From: NAIFA Member Benefits <memberbenefits@naifa.org>
To: "Michael W. Roura Puaatuua" <michael_roura@us.aflac.com>
CC:

FREE Webinar for NAIFA Members Only
Qualifying for MDRT's Top of the Table Using Disability Insurance
Date: Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Time: 11:00 a.m. to noon ET

Register Now at http://info.naifa.org/t/1505721/46131/1767/0/

Very few producers actually obtain the top ranks of MDRT. This program discusses many ideas and uses of disability insurance to propel you to that top honor status. It starts with the premise that most disability insurance is sold incorrectly! Adjusting your understanding of the actual importance of disability insurance, you can easily become one of the top Producers by adding disability to life or medical sales.

The focus is on the over 40 types or variations of using disability insurance to provide financial protection to individuals as well as the business structure. A look at the crucial need for disability insurance and how it fits within the insurance advisors portfolio is also explored. In addition, unique and varied uses and solutions of disability insurance as it pertains to the business world are reviewed.

Thomas R. Petersen, MBA, RHU, is Senior Partner, Senior Underwriter, Special Projects Director and Director of Public and Industry Relations for Petersen International Underwriters (PIU) one of the largest underwriting firms for disability coverages through Lloyds in the United States. PIU designs and issues coverages for excess and special disability insurance needs, international medical insurance, and numerous other specialty lines. Tom is also a two time Top of the Table Member of the Million Dollar Round Table, founding board member of the International DI Society, author, and speaker to numerous industry groups.

Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now at
http://info.naifa.org/t/1505721/46131/1767/0/

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar. Space is limited so reserve your seat now!

Questions? Contact the NAIFA Member Service Center, 877-866-2432.

* Interested in what you've missed in previous members-only webinars? See www.naifa.org/webinars
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