Online Newsletter for the Week Ending April 15

QUOTE: "The U.S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up to it yourself." Ben Franklin

SIMPLE TRUTHS: Every day we each have an opportunity when we awake, we can choose to be happy or we can choose to be the kind of miserable SOB that we hate to encounter; the choice is truly yours to make. Check out this short video. Recommend sharing it with your family, children and grand kids for those who have them: http://www.roadtohappinessmovie.com/

BROKER BIT: The Buyer/Seller Response is to be used EVEN when the Buyer is accepting the property with no requirements placed on the Sellers. There is a section on the form to indicate that the property is accepted and should be used. There have been a lot of uploads to paperless lately where there is no signed acceptance of the property. Also, there are a lot of documents scanned on the office equipment that are being uploaded sideways making them difficult and time consuming to review. There are instructions posted immediately above the office copiers explaining how to upload the documents vertically. If you are using your home scanners you need to check your instructions for your particular equipment.

BOOK RECOMMENDATION: I am currently reading one of the best books EVER! It is Dr. John Maxwell’s Leadership Gold. There are personal Aha’s on every page and almost every paragraph. Most people think when they hear the word Leadership that it is intended for someone else. Not so! This is meant for everyone. When you buy the book you can subscribe to Dr. Maxwell’s web site for the book and watch videos on each chapter. If you read this book and do not get anything from it you are not paying attention!

JOHN MAXWELL DAILY MINUTE: You can sign up for free at: http://johnmaxwellteam.com/

OLD TOWN STREET FAIR, April 16-17, 10:00 to 5:00, 150 vendors.

THE POWER OF THE FOLLOW-UP CALL: Good article written by Wendy Weiss. While it may at first seem as not relevant to your real estate business it actually is. Think of Business After Hours encounters or contacts at an exhibit hall home show display. In addition, how many times have we heard the word “just”, “I’m just calling to…..” Take “just” out of your vocabulary. http://www.salesdog.com/newsletter/2011/nl0521.htm#newsletter

WHY CAN’T YOU GET MORE REFERRALS? Jeffrey Gitomer hits the nail on the head with this one. Is he describing how you ask for referrals? Is there a better way. Gitomer thinks so: http://www.gitomer.com/articles/ViewPublicArticle.html?key=ajcdMibak3PJorl0%2BqQxaA%3D%3D

PARKING: Remember, the spaces in front of our building are for customers and guests to not only our business but to other businesses in the building. Please park your cars on the sides of the building or further out in the lot. You want space for your customers to park.

11 WAYS TO BUILD TRUST, another GEM by Jon Gordon. This is a must read! http://www.jongordon.com/newsletter-041111-11-ways-to-build-trust.html

EEDGE ONLINE TRAINING: You can sign up for online training for eEdge by going to: http://collaborate.kw.com/eedge/live-training-online. You literally have at your fingertips a state-of-the-art program that if and when used should help you become far more productive than you ever imagined. Keller Williams has definitely raised the bar but it is up to you to learn how to use this magnificent tool.

NEGATIVE THOUGHTS AND/OR COMMENTS: Have you ever made negative or adverse comments about another person, agent, teammate, or family member? For everyone who says NO to that question, I’ll show you someone who will lie about something else as well. We all have done it. I know this because…..

Here is what Dr. John Maxwell says about that in his book, Leadership Gold. The next time you think, feel, or say something negative or adverse about another person think about what Dr. Maxwell says below:

WE ARE HARDER ON OTHERS THAN WE ARE ON OURSELVES

Most people use two totally different sets of criteria for judging themselves versus (judging) others. We tend to judge others according to their actions. It’s very cut-and-dried. However, we judge ourselves by our intentions. Even if we do the wrong thing, if we believe our motives (intentions) were good, we let ourselves off the hook. And we are often willing to do that over and over before requiring ourselves to change.

Gymbeaux Note: Your mother was right. If you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all!

CASH FOR YOUR GADGETS: We all have old electronic gear around the house. Here is a site where you can get cash for your unused gadgets: http://www.gazelle.com/

THE LEADER-FOLLOWER LOOP: This is a link to a newsletter created by Jim Paluch whose several books I have read and re-read. Pay particular attention to the poem and as you read it imagine something as mundane as the trash piling up on the floor around a trash can or dirty dishes and food left on the kitchen table. http://tinyurl.com/

JUNK EMAIL AND OTHER EXTREMELY VALUABLE TIPS

By now, I suspect everyone is familiar with www.snopes.com and www.truthorfiction.com for determining whether information received via email is just that: true/false or fact/fiction. Both are excellent sites. The following is advice from snopes.com VERY IMPORTANT!!

1) Any time you see an email that says "forward this on to '10' (or however many) of your friends", "sign this petition", or "you'll get bad luck" or "you'll get good luck" or "you'll see something funny on your screen after you send it" or whatever --- it almost always has an email tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and emails of those folks you forward to. The host sender is getting a copy each time it gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of 'active' email addresses to use in SPAM emails or sell to other spammers. Even when you get emails that demand you send the email on if you're not ashamed of God/Jesus --- that is email tracking, and they are playing on our conscience. These people don't care how they get your email addresses - just as long as they get them. Also, emails that talk about a missing child or a child with an incurable disease "how would you feel if that was your child" --- email tracking. Ignore them and don't participate!

2) Almost all emails that ask you to add your name and forward on to others are similar to that mass letter years ago that asked people to send business cards to the little kid in Florida who wanted to break the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards. All it was, and all any of this type of email is, is a way to get names and 'cookie' tracking information for telemarketers and spammers -- to validate active email accounts for their own profitable purposes.

You can do your Friends and Family members a GREAT favor by sending this information to them. You will be providing a service to your friends. And you will be rewarded by not getting thousands of spam emails in the future!

Do yourself a favor and STOP adding your name(s) to those types of listing regardless how inviting they might sound! Or make you feel guilty if you don't! It's all about getting email addresses and nothing more.

You may think you are supporting a GREAT cause, but you are NOT! Instead, you will be getting tons of junk mail later and very possibly a virus attached! Plus, we are helping the spammers get rich! Let's not make it easy for them!

ALSO: Email petitions are NOT acceptable to Congress of any other organization - i.e. social security, etc. To be acceptable, petitions must have a "signed signature" and full address of the person signing the petition, so this is a waste of time and you are just helping the email trackers.

TIPS FOR HANDLING TELEMARKETERS

Three Little Words That Work!!

(1)The three little words are: 'Hold On, Please...'

Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off (instead of hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so much more time-consuming that boiler room sales would grind to a halt.

Then when you eventually hear the phone company's 'beep-beep-beep' tone, you know it's time to go back and hang up your handset, which has efficiently completed its task.

These three little words will help eliminate telephone soliciting..

(2) Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end?

This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls and records the time of day when a person answers the phone.

This technique is used to determine the best time of day for a 'real' sales person to call back and get someone at home.

What you can do after answering, if you notice there is no one there, is to immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6 or 7 times as quickly as possible. This confuses the machine that dialed the call, and it kicks your number out of their system. Gosh, what a shame not to have your name in their system any longer!!!

(3) Junk Mail Help:

When you get 'ads' enclosed with your phone or utility bill, return these 'ads' with your payment. Let the sending companies throw their own junk mail away.

When you get those 'pre-approved' letters in the mail for everything from credit cards to 2nd mortgages and similar type junk, do not throw away the return envelope.

Most of these come with postage-paid return envelopes, right? It costs them more than the regular 44 cents postage, 'IF' and when they receive them back.

It costs them nothing if you throw them away! The postage was around 50 cents before the last increase and it is according to the weight. In that case, why not get rid of some of your other junk mail and put it in these cool little, postage-paid return envelopes.

One of Andy Rooney 's (60 minutes) ideas.

Send an ad for your local chimney cleaner to American Express. Send a pizza coupon to Citibank. If you didn't get anything else that day, then just send them their blank application back!

If you want to remain anonymous, just make sure your name isn't on anything you send them.

You can even send the envelope back empty if you want to just to keep them guessing! It still costs them 44 cents (or more).

The banks and credit card companies are currently getting a lot of their own junk back in the mail, but folks, we need to OVERWHELM them. Let's let them know what it's like to get lots of junk mail, and best of all they're paying for it...Twice!

Let's help keep our postal service busy since they are saying that e-mail is cutting into their business profits, and that's why they need to increase postage costs again. You get the idea!

If enough people follow these tips, it will work I have been doing this for years, and I get very little junk mail anymore.