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 #3: Ask for written endorsements

Well-written, results-oriented testimonials from highly respected people are powerful for future sales. They solidify the quality of your product or service and leverage you as a person who has integrity, is trustworthy and gets the job done on time.

When is the best time to ask? Right after you have provided excellent service, gone the extra mile to help out, or in any other way made your customer really happy.

Simply ask if your customer would be willing to give you a testimonial about the value of your product or service, plus any other helpful comments.

Asking srategy #4: Ask for top-quality referrals

Just about everyone in business knows the importance of referrals. It’s the easiest, least expensive way of ensuring your growth and success in the marketplace.

Your core clients will gladly give you referrals because you treat them so well. So why not ask all of them for referrals? It’s a habit that will dramatically increase your income. Like any other habit, the more you do it the easier it becomes.

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

Web Grammar's Food for Thought

An archive of newsletters containing never ending compilation of a wealth of URLs covering, Arts, Grammar, Reference-General, Science & Technology and Writing & Journalism. http://www.webgrammar.com/foodforthought.html

Technical tips

Microsoft Excel

Find cells that are formatted with a specific colour

Want to find cells that are formatted with a specific colour? Dead easy if you are using Excel 2003 or Excel 2007.

• Press “Ctrl+F” to display the Find and Replace dialog box.
• Clear anything in the “Find What” field.
• Click “Format”. Excel will display the “Find Format” dialog box.
• Click on the “Patterns” tab (Excel 2003) or the “Fill” tab (Excel 2007).
• From the colours displayed pick the colour of the cell(s) you want to find
• Click OK.
• Click “Find All” - the Find and Replace dialog box will expand to show you the addresses of all the cells formatted with the colour you chose.
• Click one of the cell addresses in the bottom of the dialog box and press “Ctrl+A”.  - all addresses highlighted in the dialog box will be selected.
• Click “Close” when all the cells of the chosen colour will be selected.

Note: This process will also work with cell text colours.

Microsoft Word

Click and Type

Word has a Click And Type feature that will allow you to start typing anywhere on a blank page. However you must first of all enable this feature.

• Go to “Tools / Options”.
• Select the “Edit” tab.
• Select the “Enable Click And Type” check box in the “Click And Type” section.
• Click OK.

To use this feature you need to be in Print Layout view.

Suppose you want to type a title in the middle of the first page:

• Go to Print Layout view
• Double-click in the middle of the page where you want the title to appear - your cursor will be placed there so when you type the title Word will automatically centre-align the title.

Inserting non-text items works this way too.

To place a clip art picture in the bottom right corner of your page:

• In Print Layout view, double-click where you want the picture to appear.
• Insert the picture - Word will automatically right-align the picture at the bottom of the page.

Microsoft Access

Exporting a report to Word using Office Link

You probably have the need to periodically supply data to people who don't use Access. Even if they do, someone working remote from you, or who is travelling may be unable to connect to a particular data source.

Of course, you could send hardcopy reports, but they can be inefficient to work with and are costly to distribute. Plus they waste trees.

So why not convert that report into a file that users can open with Word, and send it as an e-mail attachment. The recipient can edit the results and incorporate the report into other documents. The easiest is to use is the little known Office Links feature:

• Preview the appropriate report or select it within the Database window.
• Choose Tools / Office Links / Publish It With MS Word from the menu bar.

Note that the file you have created will be in a Rich Text Format (RTF), so most of the report formatting will be preserved. However, the file will not include any graphical objects that existed in the original reports.

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/

Use computer shortcuts and launches. For Macs, it’s Quicksilver . For Windows, I found 10 Quicksilver alternatives listed here. (Disclaimer: I’m not good with Quicksilver. I use Spotlight still).

Don’t read blogs directly from the website. At least not first. Start in a good feed reader. I prefer Google Reader. It’s fast, has keyboard shortcuts, and is flexible in letting me bookmark, share, and email posts that I find useful.

Find extra time and use it. One way is to use Jott on your phone to send brief messages, to leave yourself reminders, and to take notes for future use.

Set up text replacement. This lets you type a few letters and get back several words easily. For Macs, use TextExpander. For Windows, try Texter.

Keep good notes. I’m enamored with EverNote. I’ve used it to outline documents, plan conference content, store small lists of email addresses, and even tried the optical recognition feature for photos. It’s worth checking out.

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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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