Regular relaxation is essential for a long life and personal effectiveness. Here are some techniques for relaxing physically that are used by the most successful and highest paid people in America.

Take Time Off Every Week
First of all, work only five or six days per week, and rest completely on the seventh day. Every single study in this area shows that you will be far more productive in the five or six days that you work if you take one or two days off completely than you ever would be if you worked straight through for seven days.

Get Your Mind Busy Elsewhere
During this time off, do not catch up on reports, organize your desk, prepare proposals, or do anything else that requires mental effort. Simply let your mind relax completely, and get busy doing things with your family and friends. Maybe work around the house, go for a walk, engage in physical exercise, watch television, go to a movie, or play with your children. Whatever you do, discipline yourself to shut your mental gears off completely for at least one 24-hour period every seven days.

Get Away on Mini-Vacations
Second, take one three-day vacation every three months, and during that time, refrain from doing any work. Do not attempt to catch up on even a few small things. If you do, you keep your mental gears in motion, and you end up neither resting nor properly doing work of any quality.

Take Big Chunks of Down Time
Third, take at least two full weeks off each year during which you do nothing that is work-related. You can either work or relax; you cannot do both. If you attempt to do a little work while you are on vacation, you never give your mental and emotional batteries a chance to recharge. You’ll come back from your vacation just as tired as you were when you left.

Give Yourself a Break Today
If you are involved in a difficult relationship, or situation at work that is emotionally draining, discipline yourself to take a complete break from it at least one day per week. Put the concern out of your mind. Refuse to think about it. Don’t continually discuss it, make telephone calls about it or mull it over in your mind. You cannot perform at your best mentally if you are emotionally preoccupied with a person or situation. You have to give yourself a break.

Go For a Walk in Nature
Since a change is as good as a rest, going for a nice long walk is a wonderful way to relax emotionally and mentally. As you put your physical body into motion, your thoughts and feelings seem to relax all by themselves.

Eat Lighter Foods
Also, remember that the process of digestion consumes an enormous amount of physical energy. Therefore, if you eat lighter foods, you will feel better and more refreshed afterward. If you eat more fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain products, your digestive system will require far less energy to process them.

Be Good to Yourself
Since your diet has such an impact on your level of physical energy, and through it your levels of mental and emotional energy, the more fastidious you are about what you put into your mouth, the better you will feel and the more productive you will be. We know now that foods high in fat, sugar, or salt are not good for your body. The lighter the foods you eat, the more energy you have.

Action Exercises
Here are three things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action:

First, plan your weeks in advance and build in at least one day when you will relax from work completely. Discipline yourself to keep this date.

Second, reserve, book and pay for your three day vacations several months in advance. Once you’ve paid the money, you are much more likely to go rather than put it off.

Third, decide that you will not work at all during your vacations. When you work, work. And when you rest, rest 100% of the time. This is very important.

There’s an English proverb that goes: “One father is worth more than a hundred schoolmasters.”

Fathers can teach their children many important lessons. Father’s Day is Sunday, June 15, and it brings to mind some of the valuable lessons I learned from my father, Jack Mackay. I’ve shared many of them with you in my books and columns, but here they are, in one nice package, for the 64.3 million fathers out there.

My dad headed the Associated Press in St. Paul, Minn., for many years. He lived by deadlines. When he told his 10-year-old fishing partner, “Be at the dock at 7:30 a.m.” and I arrived at 7:35, I would be holding my fishing pole in one hand and waving bon voyage with the other. Time management 101.

When I began my career selling envelopes, I asked my father how I could make twice as much money as my fellow sales reps.

He asked me how many sales calls my peers made every day. I told him that everyone made about five calls a day, and I could match them call for call.

“No good,” he said. “Do what they do and you’ll make what they make. Figure out how you can get to 10 calls a day and your income will double.”

We worked out a game plan, which became a life plan. I learned when the buyers were in the office and worked according to their schedules, which sometimes meant anytime from 6 a.m.-8 p.m. and Saturday mornings. I quit making cold calls, was among the first to get a cell phone and learned many other time management tips from my father.

TRUST is the most important five-letter word in business and in life. When I was only eight years old, he said: “Son, would you like to learn a lesson that might save your life some day?”

“Sure I would, Dad,” I answered.

“Just slide down the banister and I’ll catch you,” he urged.

I slid … and landed on the carpet. As I dusted myself off, he announced, “Never trust anyone completely. Keep your eyes open and your wits about you.”

Similarly, my father encouraged me at a young age to keep track of all the people I met on Rolodex cards, now on my computer. He was a master networker. He knew where to get stories, much like I learned where to get sales.

Maybe the most important lesson my father taught me was that your best network will develop from what you do best. In my case that was golf. When I joined the sales game after college, where I had been a varsity golfer at the University of Minnesota, my father suggested I join Oak Ridge Country Club, which I couldn’t afford. Because Oak Ridge was historically at the bottom of the city golf league, I offered to play for them and try to win them a championship. Six months and numerous meetings later, I was admitted to the club where I gained access to many of the major companies around town.

My father also taught me that the big name on the door doesn’t mean diddly. You have to know who the decision makers are.

In addition, he warned me against telling anyone how I vote. That’s why it’s a secret ballet. The Democrats think I’m a Republican, and the Republicans believe I’m a Democrat.

My father’s greatest professional attribute was his nose for a good story and his indefatigable zeal in getting it. He taught me the same desire, determination and persistence for sales.

After a skiing accident that landed me in the hospital for 35 days in neck traction, he told me, “You can take any amount of pain as long as you know it’s going to end.”

My father taught me many more life lessons, among them:

• They don’t pay off on effort . . . they pay off on results.
• No one ever choked to death swallowing his pride.
• He who burns his bridges better be a damn good swimmer.
• Education is like exercise. As soon as you quit you begin to lose the benefits.
• It’s hard to soar like an eagle when you’re dressed like a turkey.
• If you win say little. If you lose say less.
• We are judged by what we finish, not by what we start.

Mackay’s Moral: One person can make all the difference in the world—a father, for example.

Our Father’s  HANDY LITTLE CHART - GOD HAS A POSITIVE ANSWER:  

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
PASS THIS ON. YOU NEVER KNOW WHO MAY BE IN NEED
The first sentence is pretty powerful!

God determines who walks into your life….it’s up to you to decide who you let walk away, who you let stay, and who you refuse to let go.’

It’s easy to understand why upselling and cross-selling have a bad reputation. From a customer’s viewpoint, it’s annoying to have someone push a product or service at you that you don’t want. Knowing that, many reps avoid cross-selling or upselling because they don’t want to alienate their customers. But ironically, by not upselling or cross-selling, reps lose out on achieving dramatic results from one of the most powerful tools for generating sales, retaining customers and creating employee satisfaction. In short, they’re preventing themselves, their company and their customers from participating in a Win-Win-Win environment that lifts morale, promotes motivation, and increases sales.

Upselling and cross-selling are usually focused on the idea of selling something, not on what the customer wants or needs. This is why it is often perceived as someone trying to sell us something we don’t want. In many cases that’s exactly what it is! To be effective, cross and up-selling must be directed to customers’ needs. For instance, if a customer calls your service center to complain about having to pay an overdraft charge, selling them an overdraft-protection account is doing them a favor. In fact, not doing this is a disservice to the customer. But trying to sell them a new mortgage, say, while a rep has them on the phone is almost ridiculous.

Focusing on customer needs is actually a process, not a frame of mind. It means building a relationship with the customer, creating rapport, and asking the kind of probing questions that uncover how customers are thinking, what they might be overlooking, and how your products/services might make their lives easier or better.

Asking Questions
Learning how to ask questions is part of understanding your company’s products and services and how they’re used. Naturally, CSRs should have genuine respect for and thorough knowledge of the products/services customers are buying. Once that knowledge is there, time in training can be beneficially spent teaching CSRs to practice coming up with typical questions customers might ask, depending on how the products/services might be used. A little practice goes a long way in reassuring CSRsthat asking questions is not prying, but actually providing customers with valuable service.

For example, a customer may ask for the cheapest checking account. That’s what he or she says, but the underlying meaning may be more involved. After a little probing, the CSR learns that s/he typically uses an ATM that’s close to the office, thereby adding a service charge three or four times a week to the cost of the “cheapest” account. The answer to “What’s the cheapest checking account you have?” becomes:
“I’d be happy to give you that information. But I wonder if you’d just give me a little background first so we can give you the best service. Could you tell me more about how you like to do your banking? How often do you plan to write checks? What are the three features you would consider most important for your checking account to have? About how many checks will you be writing each month? Do you think you’ll be keeping a relatively high balance? Will you be linking your account to a savings account? Or a credit card? Do you use ATMs?”

Conclusion
With CSRs perfecting the tools above, customer-focused upselling and cross-selling can create a Win-Win-Win environment in your call center. The customer gets more than he or she asked for and feels satisfied, not irritated. The CSR experiences new job satisfaction and motivation from contributing instead of just passively responding. And the company benefits from dramatically increased sales and happier customers (who also stick around). 
By – Joel Linchitz

NEW YORK — Is 90 the new 50?

Not yet, aging researchers say, but medical breakthroughs to significantly extend life and ease the ailments of getting older are closer than many people think.

Harvard Medical School professor who has made headlines with research into the health benefits of a substance found in red wine called resveratrol.

Speaking on a panel of aging experts, Sinclair had the boldest predictions. He said scientists can greatly increase longevity and improve health in lab animals like mice, and that drugs to benefit people are on the way.

“It’s not an if, but a when,” said Sinclair, who co-founded Sirtris Pharmaceuticals to pursue such drugs. The company, which is testing medicine in people with Type 2 diabetes, was recently bought for $720 million by GlaxoSmithKline, the world’s second-largest drug maker.

Aging, particularly aging well and staying healthy, is increasingly a hot topic as the population grays, people live longer and tens of millions of baby-boomers enter or approach their 60s.

The experts here Sunday night said aging research, once a backwater of science, is experiencing an explosion of interest and optimism.

The biggest aging myth is that “cosmetic surgery makes you younger. I think attitude is the thing that keeps you young. And energy and activity and just keep moving.”

Robert Butler, a pioneer of aging research who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for the book “Why Survive? Being Old in America,” agreed that “people live longer and better by having a sense of purpose.” He said that while medicine and biology are important for longevity, having friendships and close relationships also have a big impact.

Butler said a revolution in longevity has already arrived, noting that in the last century life spans increased 30 years, more than in the previous 5,000 years of human history.

Sinclair said  at the longevity event he cautioned that right now there is no proven magic pill to extend life. His suggestion? Exercise.

We all get nervous when it is our turn at the podeum. Those in the audience wait in anticipation about what they are about to hear. You have a presentation to do, let’s get started!

Here are a few easy steps for a quality presentation:

1) Identify the general and specific purposes of your presentation. 

2) Clarify your objectives by asking yourself and a few others questions   about the subject. 

• What do you want your audience to gain?
• What has been asked for by the organizers or by promised to the audience?
• What value can I, personally, add to this topic?
• What is the best way to present the subject matter?
• Will I create a fun interactive environment or is the subject matter more serious requiring more hand outs?
• How can I best make it worth the time and/or money the audience is investing in attending?

 3) Create a “brain dump” of all you know about the topic.

4) Identify additional potential sources of information.

5) Gather all the information to make it modular.

• Categorize the information to make it modular.
• Analyze it for relevance and value
• Sequence the information
• Prioritize
• Fine-Tune

6) Create an outline.

• Chronological
• Narrative
• Cause/effect
• Problem/solution
• Topical
• Journalistic

 Create an outline of your presentation by using Post It Notes. Then move them around as you develop your presentation. 

The three C’s of Powerful Presenting:

Clarity

Consciousness

Conviction/passion  

Small talk is an important aspect of communicating and interacting with others. Although people often like engaging in serious and intriguing dialogue, it’s not the only kind of conversation they want to have. Additionally, small talk is another way to get to know someone better. When any of us do engage in small talk we send out messages about ourselves. However, for some small talk is not an easy thing to do.

Many of us believe we are not very good at small talk and because we believe this we avoid it. However, each and every one of us does engage in small talk at one time or another. Small talk can be as very simple as,

“How are you? How’s the family doing?”

Each of us has asked those questions, or similar ones of another person, numerous times. The response to questions like that generally runs along the lines of,

“Great! Thank you. And how are you doing?”

This is small talk.

If you have difficulty with small talk, don’t worry; a lot people have a problem with engaging themselves in small talk. There are many people who are shy and this shyness is one of the major reasons preventing them from initiating and even participating in small talk. But there are things you can do to that can help you engage in small talk.

Practice is the first attitude to adopt to learn to be a small talker. Practice with everyone you see. Ask the sales clerk how they are doing. Ask the person next to you in any line how are they doing. You can’t become a small talker by not practicing to become one. Overcome anything keeping you from small talk by practicing to be a small talker.

Another tip to follow is to become a walking warehouse of information. What this requires is that you read a lot and pay attention to the news and the current events, especially those events in your area. Being informed about what is going on in your social environment is a good source to making small talk. People enjoy talking and hearing about what is going on around them, and perhaps this is the best definition of small talk: talking about what is going on around people.

Because small talk is so crucial it can make or break a personal relationship, even intimate ones. Many women, for example, enjoy small talk very much. A man who can’t participate in small talk with them can actually cause them some frustration. If you can’t indulge in small talk with a woman they will become bored very quickly with you.

When you see an opportunity for small talk take a moment and think about what you are going say. Think about the conversation you might have with the other person. Conversations never happen in a vacuum. Each conversation has its own context, as well as environment. Look around your environment and you will find something to talk about in your surroundings.

Small talk will impact your success in every relationship because it shapes how those you are communicating with perceive you. Small talk sends messages regarding one’s intelligence; this is why becoming informative is so important. Also, it sends a message about your confidence. Research indicates that the perception from a good conversationalist is that they are intelligent and confident.

Adaptation is another small talk success secret. What this means is that, in order to engage in effective small talk, you must be able to adapt to your environment and surroundings, which includes those around you. Take your cues from those and you can’t go far wrong with small talk.