April 21, 2008
Given everyone’s busy schedule, leaving voice mail
messages is an unavoidable business practice. However,
voice mail is a tool. Despite its widespread use among
companies, government agencies and private residences,
callers often are not prepared to leave a coherent, concise
message. Many times the beep impels callers to prattle and
digress.
Here are some suggestions I got from Diane Diresta, a
professional speaker, coach and author of Knockout
Presentation: How to Deliver Your Message with Power,
Punch, and Pizzazz, to make your voice mail more effective.
1. Plan your message. Think about what you want to say
before you leave the message.
2. Get to the point. Stream of consciousness doesn’t work.
3. Be brief. Aim for a 15- to 30-second message.
4. Speak slowly. The recipient needs to process the
information and write it down.
5. Enunciate clearly. Bear in mind that a telephone distorts
certain sounds.
6. Be “up” in your voice. A monotone lacks enthusiasm.
Smile as you leave your message.
7. Modulate your volume. Too loud is irritating. Too soft can’t
be heard. Don’t cradle the phone between your neck and
shoulders.
8. Monitor your tine. Avoid sarcasm and irritation if you want
your call returned.
9. Avoid telephone tag. Give the recipient options as to
when you can be reached.
10. End with the telephone number. Say your number two
times slowly.
When used properly, voice mail can improve
communications dramatically. Be sure you use it to improve
communications, and not to avoid communications. You
should answer your phone whenever you are available. After
all, if callers are constantly answered by voice mail, they will
suspect that you are avoiding your calls.
Martin Cohn has over thirty years of public relations
experience. He can be reached at http://www.cohnpr.com
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April 4, 2008
Because members of the general public or clientele come to your place of work or you go to their place of work you can consider thinking about buying small business public liability insurance. This breed of insurance may cover various things, any awards & cash passed to a member of the public because of injury and damage to the customer’s workplace caused through actions by you & your work.
There are also lots of circumstances, exclusions & warranties that can often be applied to business liability insurance policies. It is consequently key that you scrutinize with your insurance advisor any that can be found applicable to your risk insurance policy.
A good company who specialise in all this is Insured Risks. The small business insurance organisation recommend business insurance available at an extraordinarily reasonable price. The firm can assure that you and your brand take out the correct business insurance policy that is suitable for you and your place of work. Having public liability insurance is not a legal requirement even so, it does however make magnificent business sense. Local authorities might well generally appreciate a minimum level of £1 million public liability insurance for works to be undertaken at the customer’s property & on the client’s behalf. Buy public liability insurance from Insured Risks.
Insured Risks public liability cover is available for more than 240 contracting trades and professional occupations. Public liability cover is available on steps of one million £2m and for the majority of cases five million. The insurance organization is specially designed to cover individual trades men, professionals and start-up businesses up to a total of 10 workers, with or without limited company status.
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April 3, 2008
This article gives free tips and advice about how to reduce
stress. I am a person who used to stress in a big way. At one
point a work colleague made a comment that he thought that I
walked around with the weight of the world’s problems on my
shoulders. My hair started to turn grey when I was only
twenty-one years of age. Things though had to and were about to
change.
I realised that the way I was living my life was not only
probably unhealthy but was also a very unhappy one. By the age
of twenty-two I decided to attempt to change the way I lived my
life. I believed that I needed a change of attitude, I was
somebody who was extremely negative and the first thing I worked
on was trying to become a far more positive thinker.
I then went about reading lots of books about mind over matter
and positive thinking. To my surprise, I actually enjoyed
reading this material and the lessons I learnt were to change my
life forever, in a good way.
The first thing I learnt, which seems so obvious now, is that
worrying and stressing about a situation does not make it go
away or make it any easier. In fact it makes it a whole lot
worse. The important thing to remember is that in life all you
can do is try your best. When a negative thought or worry enters
your head you need to immediately ignore it and to change your
thought processes into thinking about something which makes you
happy or smile. You have to treat these demons as your worst
enemy and fight them away. Treat it like a war and be determined
not to let them win the battle of minds.
The next lesson I learnt was that a life spent constantly
stressing is a waste of a life. You never know when your time is
up and therefore you need to make every minute count. We only
know for a fact that we have one life, even though I do
personally believe in the after life, therefore we have to make
the most of that life. I now live every day like it is my last,
I live each one to the full.
The last piece of advice is to think about other people in the
world who are not as fortunate as yourself. I for example used
to feel very sorry for myself and believed that I was very
unlucky. When thinking about other people who live in the world,
I actually realised that I was actually one of the lucky ones.
People in for example parts of Africa and the third world would
probably laugh at me if I had described my worries to them.
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