Terence's jottings

The Power of Asking; 7 Ways to Boost Your Business

by Jack Canfield

The gift called “asking” has been around for a long, long time. One of life’s fundamental truths states, “Ask and you shall receive.” Kids are masters at using this gift, but we adults seem to have lost our ability to ask. We come up with all sorts of excuses and reasons to avoid any possibility of rejection.

Yet the world responds to those who ask! If you are not moving closer to what you want, you probably aren’t doing enough asking.

Here are seven asking strategies you can implement in your business (and in life) to boost your results and your bottom line:

Asking strategy #2: Ask for business

Here’s an amazing statistic: after giving a complete presentation about the benefits of their product or service, more than 60 percent of the time salespeople never ask for the order! That’s a bad habit, and one that could ultimately put you out of business.

Always ask a closing question to secure the business. Don’t waffle or talk around it—or worse, wait for your prospect to ask you. No doubt you have heard of many good ways to ask the question, “Would you like to give it a try?” The point is, ask.

To be continued

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Jack Canfield, America's #1 Success Coach, is the founder and co-creator of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul and a leading authority on Peak Performance and Life Success. If you're ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your FREE success tips from Jack Canfield now at: www.FreeSuccessStrategies.com

My favourite links

Whatis

The world of ICT, as we know it, is rapidly changing . This "IT encyclopedia" is invaluable for the latest, and concise, definitions of acronyms, applications and innovations. Whatis .

Technical tips

Microsoft Excel

Double-clicking to widen columns doesn't always work

Normally, in order to widen a column, Excel allows you to double-click on the divider bar between the column heads.

For example, say you want to widen column D. Then all you need do is to position the mouse cursor on the divider between the column D and column E column headers when the mouse pointer will change to a double-headed arrow. Double-click and column D is widened to be wide enough to accept the widest information in its cells.

If you want to widen adjacent columns, then highlight them all and use what has been previously described. All of the highlighted columns will be widened to accomodate the widest information in their cells.

However, sometimes there are times when this method won't work:

• Excel won't widen a column using this method if the worksheet is protected.
• If the column is formatted using the “Wrap Text” attribute, double-clicking will not widen it, regardless of cell content.
• If there are any merged cells spanning the column(s) you want to widen.

You can use any other, different, method of widening the column, but double-clicking will not work in these cases.

Microsoft Word

Copying a website to Word

To paste only text from a Web page into MS Word:

• Select the content you wish to copy from the web page by pressing “Ctrl+A”.
• Copy the selected content to the clipboard by pressing your “Ctrl+C”.

You now need to tell Ms Word to paste the text without any graphics or formatting:

• Click on “Edit” and choose “Paste Special”.
• Select “Unformatted Text”.
• Click “OK”.

Microsoft Access

Viewing Access data in an earlier version

Assuming that you have Access 2000, then if you have a way to use Access 2003, installed on another computer say, you can convert the 2003 database to 2000 format, and then open that copy in Access 2000.

Go to the conversion selection on the “Tools/Database Utilities/Convert Database” menu.

Unfortunately, if the 2003 database was sent to you by someone else, and you have no way of accessing Access 2003, then that person would have to do the conversion, and send you the 2000 version of the database.

These, and other, tips have been garnered from many sources over the years. My grateful thanks to the originators.

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Time management

10 Tech solutions to improve your productivity

By: Chris Brogan http://www.chrisbrogan.com.

Get a system. I’m listening to Stever Robbins , who just put together You Are Not Your Inbox, an audio program that will help you manage your email.

Get a proxy. Try out Jared Goralnick’s Away Find . It helps you with a sort of virtual message manager.

Practice keeping your inbox at zero. (I’ve explained how I tamed my inbox before.)

Learn shortcuts. Here are keyboard shortcuts for Firefox , Safari , IE7, Gmail , Google Reader, and I’m sure you can find more.

Cut down on your browsing. Lifehacker (and Julien Smith ) pointed out Freedom, a Mac application. I’m sure there’s a PC version. See also Rescue Time .

To be continued

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For free Time Management articles to help you get more done in less time, with less stress, visit our website now at: http://www.balancetime.com

Don Wetmore | Professional Speaker | Productivity Institute Time Management Seminars 127 Jefferson St, Stratford, CT 06615 | (203) 386-8062 (800) 969-3773 | Fax: (203) 386-8064 Email:ctsem@msn.com

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