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You would probably be surprised how many people are persuaded to order your product or service, only to change their mind at the last second and not complete their order. If you look at the stats logs for your ‘order page’ you will realise that quite a few people get as far as your order page only to change their mind and not order from you at the last minute.

They might not have ordered for a variety of reasons:

They might be having second thoughts
Perhaps they were interrupted
They might have misplaced their credit card for the moment
The only thing you know for sure is that they were so close to closing the deal with you.

The secret to recovering some of these lost orders is to find out who these “close but not quite” visitors are. This can be done by putting up a pre-order catcher technique in place.

What Is A Pre-Order Catcher?

When someone clicks the “Buy Now” or the order link to make a purchase, they are not taken straight to the order page. Instead they land on a pre-order page. This pre-order page informs them of the main benefits of investing in the product. The pre-order page then asks for their first name and email address of where any further information about where any purchase information is to be sent. Once they enter their name and email address, and press continue they are then sent to the secure credit card information screen to finish placing their order.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the pre-order page sends their name and email address to an auto-responder which is programmed with one message only. This message is a “pre-welcome” message about their purchase. This email does the following:

Reinforces their good decision to order
Offers assistance in the event they tried to order but it didn’t make it through
Restates some of the benefits of ordering
Includes a testimonial or two
Includes the order link again just in case they need it
Note: this is the only message that is sent out to these people. They are not put into an auto-responder sequence of any kind.

For those customers who have ordered by the time they read this email, it simply thanks them as a customer and reinforces their smart decision to purchase. Anyone who didn’t actually successfully complete their order gets the same email. For them, the email acts as a another opportunity to order from you – a very little extra nudge.

This pre-order page technique has proven to be very effective on some sites. You may want to see if you can apply this technique to your site. As always, track your results. I bet you may be pleasantly surprised.

Getting yourself a unique username can be tough at times. Setting up a username and using it is not difficult at all. However, a username that is unique and different from other ones is difficult to set up. Thus we have compiled for you a few important tips that can help you a lot in the long run. These tips are as follows.

1. Use your favorite pastime

Making a username out of your favorite pastime or out of what you love doing a lot will not only help in making it easy to remember, but it can also be personal to a large extent. For example, you can add your pastime and also add your birth year to it. This username will always be remembered.

2. Keep it simple

This means that you don’t have to over complicate things. Keep it as simple as possible so that it is easily to remember. Complicating your username can make you forget it while you are in a hurry to log in or sign in.

3. Use a third language

Instead of always sticking to your first two languages, you can go for any third world languages that you feel you are comfortable with. This will obviously enable you to get an extremely unique username which you can use for a very long period of time.

4. Use your pet’s name

You can use the name of a pet along with your name to form a complete username, or you can use your pet’s name as it is without any outside interference. The same can be true for other sports teams. You can use your favorite sport teams name as your username along with your own name. This will surely be as unique as possible and there is nothing else to be worried about. It is one of the important things to remember.

5. Make use of unique characters

Those unique characters that are on your keyboard must also be used effectively. Along with your own name, make sure you add a few unique ones in order to make it much more unique. There is nothing that can stop you from doing so. Most of the popular websites encourage users to use these unique characters because they safeguard your privacy and no one else can log in with your name. This is obviously extremely useful in the long run and for privacy purposes.

When looking for a business, things are not always what they seem. If you stop for a moment to analyze what you are seeing before joining an offer, you’ll probably save a lot of money, a lot of your time and a lot of frustration.

Some things to look at before joining:

The Company Website: This is easy… one half-way talented individual can go to Wix and build a Site in a few days that looks like some multi-national conglomerate. It could be a One-Man Operation.

Payment Processors: There are several. Some are even free. With a few bucks to set it up it will look like your sending money to a big business. It could be a One-Man Operation.

Company Name: They will make up something that sounds fabulous but is really just a Postal Box. It could be a One-Man Operation.

Incorporated: Is it really? Check with the State where they claim to do business. Is their mailing address in the same State where they claim to be a Corporation. They may be incorporated in Nevada or Delaware, but they have their operation elsewhere. Some may just say they are an Inc. or an LLC… but are not. Check with the local BBB also. It could be a One-Man Operation.

Their Products: Do they make their own? If not, it could just be a private label operation with questionable product quality. Be careful. It could be a One-Man Operation.

Shipping: Are the products sent from their stated location or do the products come from some completely different place? Does it take a long time to get the product once you order? Could mean the ‘company’ is behind in their payments to the distributor. It could be a One-Man Operation.

Calling Customer Service: Do you get a recording saying they have a ‘high call volume’ and will get back to you if you will leave a message. It could be a One-Man Operation.

Be careful. 80% of the time a new business fails within the first 18 months. Do not waste your time. Another reason to be careful is that these fly-by-night people just want your ‘enrollment’ fee. I do not like seeing people’s dreams shattered.

Oh, sure… they will try to keep things going for a while to collect more and more enrollments, but most could care less about you using any products. They just want more enrollment fees.

A few years ago, one such operation was finally shut down by the Government and it was estimated the owner had taken in around $43,000,000.00 in the couple of years he operated.

Please do some research before you sign-up with anyone! It could be a One-Man Operation.

The virtual assistant (VA) is sometimes but often misunderstood as a kind of “luxury” that only big companies can afford to outsource projects, but considering you are the owner, and you are spending too much time on repetitive administrative tasks, then you are probably missing out on high valued opportunities to make your business grow. Your company needs a leader, not an administrator.

Look further below. You might try delegating one after.

Here are the five signs to consider why you should invest in VA:

1. Don’t Have Enough Time to Work on Those Big Ideas

When you are too busy assuring everything comes to places and all of a sudden you’ve got a big idea on how to improve your business. You cannot pause the operation for a day or a week, right? Hiring a physical assistant can’t be practical. A VA can take care of your routine to give you more time realizing your ideas.

2. Don’t Have a Budget for a Permanent Employee

Start-up companies are usually in the recovering stage and outsourcing a VA is a useful way of reducing its expenses. Your money is not a waste on investing on it, where you are only paying either via per productive hour or project, unlike to permanent employee which you are obliged to pay their salaries and benefits whether they are doing their job or not.

3. Don’t Have an Office for Your Physical Employee

Having a physical employee requires you to have also an office, along with it are those expenses such as supplies, rent, water, electricity, and internet, etc., hiring a VA can save all of those. You can get specific outputs on them for it offers various services that suite to your needs.

4. The scarcity of Skills to Grow Your Company

In this age of mobile technology, businesses without an online presence are out of business. If you want your products and services to be more competitive in the market, but you have the scarcity of skills of doing so, outsource a VA! There is an assistant in every project you desire like accounting, website, development, social media, digital marketing, SEO, content writing, graphics design, market research, transcription, medical coding and billing, human resources the list goes on. You don’t have to do all the research and go with the trial and error stuff for you to bring your ideas to reality.

5. Don’t Have Time for Your Personal Life

I believe that there are reasons behind every business venture. This reasons might be your friend, your partner or your family. If you are permanently busy managing, overseeing, and doing tasks on your list, you might lose time for your personal life. Having someone to handle your administrative duties, will free-up your time and this could also increase your day to day productivity and improve your flexibility not only as a businessman but also as a human.

It makes better sense to work at home, than getting a second job in today’s economy. Being an entrepreneur can be hard at first. However, by utilizing network marketing techniques, you can earn some cash, communicate with others, and assist people by being independent agents. The valuable advice given in this article will put you on the right track for network marketing success.

In order for your business to be a success, you must begin to think like a CEO. When you manage your company with strong convictions, your customers are assured that you believe in your products and services. As a result, they will always be comfortable doing business with you.

Know how you’re going to answer difficult questions about your network marketing business before they are asked. Inevitably, some people will ask you if your business is a pyramid scheme. Tell them that they need to look elsewhere if that is what they are interested in. Knowing the answers to difficult questions ahead of time will make you appear knowledgeable and savvy.

It’s hard to feign concern in MLM if you don’t have it, so when a person approaches you with questions or complaints, they’ll spot the fakeness if you’re displaying it. You won’t need to be overly compassionate to their plight, but you will have to take their concerns seriously so that you come across well.

Treat it like a real business and not a get rich quick scheme. That is why you chose a legitimate business opportunity to get involved with in the first place.

Make sure you keep a positive attitude and focus. Many people are in network marketing, and many people enjoy it, but as with everything else, there are also many people who do not like it. Staying positive as you propel yourself through the business world is an essential tool to your success in network marketing.

Ask lots of questions. When you are out doing network marketing in person, make sure that you ask a lot of questions. The person asking the questions is the one in control and asking questions enables you to get as much information as possible from other successful people without having to give away your own secrets.

A good rule of thumb for calculating an emergency fund is to multiply your monthly expenses by nine. With network marketing, you can make that much money with money to spare!

Don’t overwhelm yourself with potential contacts. Focus on about ten names at a time. This will allow you to give each contact the personal attention needed to recruit them into your network, without needing to devote your entire life to recruiting. Your list will grow faster than you make connections, but that’s okay.

One place to look for network marketing assistance is in online forums. Plenty of people experience the same difficulties with network marketing programs, and lots of them share those experiences online. Forum participation can give marketers useful strategies and show them pitfalls to avoid. Forums are also great places for marketers in different network programs to cross-pollinate their ideas, sharing tactics with universal applicability.

People are swiftly moving to Kindle, Nook, and other eReaders. It’s time for you to write an eBook or a hundred on network marketing! Keep each book simple, concise, and relatively small, as people like to read short eBooks which give them quick and accurate information. Keep your pricing low and the volume of eBooks sold will more than make up for it!

Take a break! Staring at a computer screen all day while working on your network marketing business can wreak havoc on your eyes, leading to expensive glasses or contact lens prescriptions. At least once an hour take your eyes off the screen and try to look out the window at something far away. Relax your eyes until everything goes blurry, and why not do some deep breathing exercises at the same time? Let your eyes rest for a few minutes and then get back to work.

You have to make a decision that your network marketing business will be built to be a success. Many people who start network marketing treat it as more of a hobby than a tried and true business and this inevitably leads to why people fail. It is a business and can make you a considerable income, do not treat it as anything different.

Make use of a network marketing system. A system will help you stay focused on your success and ensure you’re taking the right steps to build your network. Networking systems also provide you with tools to measure how you’re doing and instructions to patch up the places where you might be struggling.

Network marketing is just one of the various ways big corporations discover their audience by using your particular network. The tips in this article can help you achieve success in your network marketing endeavor.

Over the past few years, SEO has evolved faster than the previous decade. And this has made it harder for users to keep up with most recent updates. The launch of Penguin and Panda changed the way things worked in the past. In short, the way Google used to rank website has changed a lot. But if you want to reach your objectives, make sure you avoid some common SEO mistakes.

1. Avoiding RELEVANT CONTENT

In the start, Google said that it would rank websites that have the most relevant content on its first page. This statement is still valid. What has happened is that the search engine has become a lot better at achieving the objectives. In other words, now, Google is in better position to know what is relevant and what is not.

So, what you need to do is offer content that is relevant and avoid content is not relevant to your niche. Of course, the content should be informative and unique.

2. Following Tricks

People have been using many illegal ways of cheating the search engine algorithms for traffic, exposure and backlinks. Some of these tactics can still give you a temporary edge, but they are bad for your blog or website for the long-term.

So, you should avoid using low-quality, duplicate content, keyword stuffing, questionable redirects or cloaking for traffic. It may be tempting to go for these short-cuts, but they will just hurt your ranking, and may even get you banned for good.

3. Overloading your site

It has been a common perception that photos, videos and other graphics make a website more appealing for the viewers. To some extent, this perception is true; however, there should not be too much of it or your website will take ages to load. Your viewers don’t have all day to wait for your site to load. If your blog takes longer to load than other websites, the viewers will just click away. You will not only lose viewers, you will also lose ranking against other websites.

4. Making navigation difficult

Navigation is one of the most important factors for any website. It’s important for both viewers and search engines. Ideally, your viewers should be able to get the desired information from your website in one or two clicks. This may not be an easy task for you. So, what you can do is put important content on the main page of your site. This the users will be able to get what they want more easily.

5. Misunderstanding THE BACKLINK PROCESS

You may not want to be obsessed with obtaining a lot of backlinks. Although you don’t have to have backlinks from authority websites to establish your credibility, it helps a lot. However, what you need to do is try to get backclinks in a nature fashion. But it’s not a good idea to buy backlinks. This is one of the worst mistakes that you can make.

Quality content is the key to SEO success. Content doesn’t just mean your text contents. Images must be an integral part of your content strategy. At times, single images can be far more effective than your 1000 word blog post. It also helps you improve blog post quality and performance.

Images, Infographics, Videos and all other multimedia contents on your web page will help you in increasing the user engagement on your site and makes the visitors stay on your site for longer duration which helps in reducing the bounce rate.

Not just adding images to your contents, you should also optimize those images for better SEO performance. Optimization of images must be the one important aspect of your on-page SEO process.

If you are using images in your content, there are many aspects to be considered related to SEO.

Relevancy

Using images doesn’t mean that you should fill up your content with loads of pictures. You should use it only when it is required and also you should use images that are more relevant to your content.

Placement of your images is an another important aspect. It should be placed at a relevant location in your content according to your text content.

Use original images

Originality always helps in improving your user experience and your authority. Usage of original images will be helpful in improving your SEO performance. You can create original images with a graphic designer or you can take your own photographs with a quality camera. It is the reason top White hat SEO companies employ talented graphic designers for creating quality images.

If you are not able to employ an in-house graphic designer or if you are running out of time, you can always use high quality images from the web. But the important factor to be considered is it should be copyright free.

There are many tools available for getting copyright free images without any cost. The most popular ones are Unsplash, Flicker, Freeimages.

Image Size

Images are the main source for damping your site’s speed. And site speed is a crucial factor in your SEO performance. So, you should be extra cautious in using images without compromising your page speed.

It should not also affect your image quality, you should have a correct balance between. You can achieve this by reducing the file size by compression. You can use tools like Photoshop for compression.

File name

Search engine crawlers are visually impaired, it can even interrupt a 5000 word text content, but it cannot interrupt a single image and what the image is about. It is the reason using a keyword rich file names for your images is an important aspect in image optimization.

Google bots and other search engine crawlers can read your image’s file name and if it is named with your target keyword, it gives a signal to search engines about the image topic and thus helps your SEO performance.

For example, if your image is related to selling sports shoes, rather than using the file name as “IMG_89868″ you can use it as “Black_Tennis_Shoes”.

Alt text

Similar to the file name, search engines can read Alt text of the images. Alt text is known as “Aleternative Text”, is an HTML attribute used to describe the content of images.

You should use Alt text which is relevant to your images and it should be clear and descriptive. You can use your target keywords in the Alt text but be cautious about Keyword stuffing.

If you are not focusing on Image optimization, you are missing a huge opportunity in improving your SEO performance. You can use above mentioned best practices in your on-page optimization process.

American youth currently face challenging realities along their way to adulthood. With parents working longer hours and the absence of grandparents and other community adults who used to make up support systems, the intergenerational fabric of community has been frayed. Youth development strategies aim to reweave community fabric in a new way – one that takes the supports and opportunities young people should have, and re-institutes them in the context of young people’s realities today. While many of these realities are harsh ones, we know that young people themselves want to be involved in their communities. The importance of building positive youth/adult partnerships in this process cannot be stressed enough.

The mobilization effort is based on influencing three critical elements: information, attitudes, involvement. The transformation of each of these areas, both in the public and private domains, is a necessary condition for change. For example, in the area of information, the country is currently focused on collecting primarily negative youth information, e.g., teenage births, dropouts, and juvenile arrest rate. Inspiring a 180 degree shift, we need to collect information such as: average number of hours youth participate in after-school activities, computer to youth ratio in non-school hours, and the percentage of youth who hold part-time jobs. The three elements are intertwined, for how information is gathered and communicated impacts attitudes as well as how and if people choose to become involved.

Only through broad community commitment, strong public will, and diverse partnerships can youth development take root, go to scale, and be sustained over time. Ultimately, the mobilization must be supported by partnerships among all of the systems in a community that affect young people (i.e., education, corporations, health care, juvenile justice, religious groups, and recreation). To build these relationships and establish youth development infrastructures to improve developmental paths of adolescents will take at least 10 years.

Localities currently spending their resources on efforts to “fix youth” will need to pool, redirect, and increase their financial commitment to youth development. These additional dollars will ensure all youth equal access to supports and opportunities, especially youth living in economically distressed areas.

Our information on the services young people need, and use, is still hit or miss. Communities do not know what they have or what they need. They usually have no way to tell how well services are being used and what services need to be improved.

Good information is important for youth services for exactly the same reasons it is important for everything else. Accurate, accessible standardized information lets people find the services they need and use them effectively. It lets communities manage, evaluate and improve their services and determine the need for changing them, eliminating them, or developing new ones.

Many national efforts to measure outcomes presently use deficit-driven indicators to assess young people’s condition in society, such as teen pregnancy rates, juvenile crime numbers, and percentages of high school dropouts. Although these measures are important, they do not tell the whole story about young people’s experiences. Measures that reflect positive conditions and experiences of young people are also important.

The accelerated trend of the past decade toward empowering our nation’s young people to succeed has fostered a new awareness and commitment to this most valuable resource. Some basic questions are:

- How much do we currently spend?

- How much should we spend?

Some progress has been made through new initiatives in education finance reform and services integration, providing more effective delivery of social, health and educational services for children and youth from the classroom up to the government. This document establishes an initial framework and formula for assessing the financial resources and mechanisms necessary to move American society closer to this ideal. The following were found to be potential root causes of these trends in spending:

- Devaluation of adolescents.

- Lack of consensus on youth development.

- Lack of adequate and protected funding. Funds are not protected and dedicated in the manner necessary to sustain the long-term, comprehensive process that is youth development.

We can support the move toward the ideal by:

- Seeking new types of information.

- Building on the after-school momentum.

- Making a sustainable public investment.

Youth development is an investment that must be made by each sector of the wider community – public and private. Examination of the federal-state matching, local dedicated taxes an incentives for business and philanthropy could lead to models for providing adequate and sustainable funding for youth development. National intermediaries must work to cultivate this leadership at all levels of government, and at the grassroots, by creating constituencies.

Several states are taking the lead from California, Oregon and Illinois by offering state-sponsored retirement plans that encourage or require private sector employers to participate.

The plans are referred to as auto-IRAs because eligible workers are automatically enrolled, generally within 30 days of employment. The default contribution rate is typically 3-5% of a paycheck and the employee can stop, restart or transfer plan assets depending on their needs. Referred to as “public-private partnerships” by the Pew Charitable Trust, there is no cost to the employer. Proceeds are managed by a private financial firm management for a pre-determined fee. The plans are subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) like other sponsored pension and benefit plans.

This article provides an overview of the states that currently offer savings programs, as well as those that plan to do so in the future.

OregonSaves

Oregon was one of the first states to implement a savings program for employees of small businesses who are not otherwise eligible for a workplace sponsored pension plan. Titled OregonSaves, it is a state retirement program that is available to an employer or an individual planning for the future.

OregonSaves had almost $57 million in assets as of mid-2020. Employee contributions averaged $127 to $135 per month as of that time.

Enrollment is automatic for employees, with contributions being made through payroll deductions. Each employee account is portable and can be moved from one job to another.

All Oregon employers, regardless of employee size, must facilitate the State’s program for their employees if they do not offer an employer-sponsored retirement plan. The plan is working with small employers to make the process as simple as possible.

CalSavers

CalSavers is available to California workers whose employers do not offer a workplace retirement plan, self-employed individuals, and others who want to increase their savings. Plan participants contribute to an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) that belongs to them.

California employers with more than 50 employees must register with CalSavers by June 30, 2021 if they do not already sponsor a retirement plan. Registration is available to all California employers with at least five employees.

The CalSavers program opened statewide in July 2019 and had $4.3 million in assets as of mid-2020. On average, participating employees contribute $105 to $120 monthly. Like the Oregon plan, the default savings rate is 5% of the employee’s pay and employees are automatically enrolled after 30 days of employment. They can stop, restart or transfer plan participation at any time if they change employers.

CalSavers Retirement Savings Program is designed to simplify employer participation with no employer fees, no fiduciary responsibility, and minimal ongoing responsibilities. Employers that fail to offer participation in the plan as required are subject to fines.

In May 2021, a federal appeals court in San Francisco dismissed a legal challenge to the CalSavers plan.

Illinois Secure Choice Retirement Savings Program

Illinois launched its Secure Choice Retirement Savings Program in 2018. It is a state-facilitated retirement program that is open to employees who work for an eligible employer as well as other employees who want to enroll independent of their employer. Approximately 32,000 Illinois employees saved $8.5 million in the first year of the Illinois Secure Choice program, according to state reports.

The Illinois Secure Choice account is a Roth IRA for the employee. The default savings rate is 5% of gross pay. Employees are automatically enrolled through payroll contributions after 30 days of employment. An employee can opt out at any time. Plan participants are charged a fee of 0.75% of assets per year ($0.75 for every $100 saved), which pays for program administration and operating expenses.

The Illinois Secure Choice had 5,544 registered employers as of May 2020. There are no fees for employers to facilitate the program and employers cannot make contributions to their employee accounts. Employers serve a limited role as a facilitator. As of November, 2019, employers with 25 or more employees that have been in business for two years or more are required to participate in the program. Employers that already offer an employer-sponsored retirement plan are exempt from this legislation.

New Jersey Secure Choice Savings

The “New Jersey Secure Choice Savings Act,” was signed into law in March 2019, with a two-year time frame scheduled to take effect in March 2021.

The Act requires employers that have been in business for two years and have 25 or more employees to participate in a retirement savings program administered through automatic payroll deductions. Private sector employees of businesses of any size are able to participate in the retirement savings program. Smaller or newer employers could join voluntarily. Failure to comply will result in fines to the employer.

Employees will be automatically enrolled at the leve of a 3% paycheck contribution. The annual contribution maximum is $6,000 for those under 50 years old, and $7,000 for those 50 or older.

Connecticut Secure Choice Savings Plan

Connecticut employers with five or more employees must offer a retirement plan to employees, and private employers with four or fewer employees may choose to do so. Employees are auto-enrolled within 120 days of employment, and employees must be notified of their rights within 30 days. Employers are not permitted to make contributions to the program.

The Connecticut Retirement Security Authority, a quasi-public agency, was formed in 2016 to oversee the program. The state estimates that as many as 600,000 employees may benefit from the plan.

Tales from the Online Marketing Crypt #18

Why being mindful of clients’ perspectives can keep them supporting your business

We all have them.

Days when everything pisses us off.

In fact, I doubt there’s a human being on this planet who hasn’t been in a bad mood every now and then.

I know I sure have my fair share of them!

And for a variety of reasons too.

But there’s one thing we business owners have an unwritten rule about (well probably it’s written somewhere by someone) is that no matter what, we don’t bring our bad mood with us when communicating with clients.

Would you agree with that fundamental principle?

But how many times have you, as a client or customer, been on the receiving end of someone’s bad mood?

It happened to me recently and that single instance literally destroyed a 30 year working relationship.

I had a hair appointment with the same gal that I’ve been seeing for decades. She works out of her home and lives about 25 minutes away from me.

I know exactly how long it takes for me to get to her place and am typically on time, every time.

Except the last two appointments.

The time previous to this last visit, I had an emergency come up just before heading out the door. It was something I had to take care of or faced dire consequences (as in having a very angry client on my hands!)

It meant I was going to be about 5 minutes late for my appointment. I texted her when I was leaving stating I was hurrying over and will be a few minutes late.

She didn’t reply and never said anything when I got there. We had our usual girl talk that I very much looked forward to.

This recent time I needed to do a quick errand before my appointment. I completely misjudged how much time it would take me to get from that other location to my stylist’s place. Plus… I got lost finding my way there since I was coming from a different direction.

I didn’t want to risk taking any time to stop and text her and honestly thought I was just a minute away… except it was more like 15 minutes before I finally got there.

I’ve never been 15 minutes late for anything and I felt terrible. I apologized profusely but unfortunately, she wouldn’t hear any of it.

She was pissed.

So angry in fact, she first lectured me on “always” being late, citing my text from the previous appointment, and that she was sick and tired of constantly hearing, “sorry I’m late” as if I’m the only one that says that every time I walk into her room.

Disclaimer: I’m a Canadian. We apologize for everything, even if we’re 1 minute late!

Stunned at how mad she was, especially knowing I was the last appointment of the day, I apologized again and tried to explain why I was late and even offered to leave with my hair wet to make up for the lateness so we would still end in time.

I didn’t know what else to do to rectify my error.

She was so angry, she gave me the silent treatment and only grunted her “hold your head here” and “move to the sink” commands throughout the entire time there.

I did leave with wet hair, 15 minutes earlier than what our appointment time would have ended at had I been on time, vowing to never return again.

I fully realize I was the catalyst that set off her anger, and I also realize she had to have been having one helluva a bad day before I arrived, and I got the brunt of her wrath.

I get it.

But as a customer, a loyal one for 30 years at that, there’s no excuse whatsoever to be treated like that.

Never.

When I have bad days like what she must have experienced, I set aside whatever is going on and treat anyone who I speak with that day, whether it’s one of our team members, a client, a lead or even chatting on social media, with the utmost respect and kindness.

Even if they are the reason for my having a bad day.

It serves no purpose whatsoever to make the other person feel worse than what I am feeling.

I found this experience to be so distressing, I posted about it on Facebook.

I received a variety of responses, ranging from my owing her an apology (which I did) to justifying why she blew up, right over to demanding I fire her on the spot (which I ended up doing).

These kinds of responses go to show how we are all human and all look at experiences from our own lens and past history.

For me, I was taken straight back to elementary school when I was the victim of bullying quite a bit. A feeling I never want to experience again!

For others, they empathized with her where time is very important to them and get angry themselves when someone disrespects it. (I’m actually the same way – being punctual is a huge deal for me.)

One thing I have done as a result of this experience is to find the lesson behind it all. For one, I will definitely plan my time better and ensure I give myself enough time to do what needs to be done in time!

I also learned just how fragile our relationships can be.

She lost a client of 30 years – and I lost any further opportunities to visit with someone I’ve known a long time to get some of the much valued girl time I look forward to with each visit.

It doesn’t take much to destroy a 30 year working relationship.

Yes I realize I could reach out and try to mend the fences but I am choosing not to. At least not right now.

At the end of the day, this lesson goes to show how important it is for us all to keep our anger in check. To realize our anger is being received by the other person, and be aware of how they are receiving it with their own personal response. They won’t always understand where you are coming from because they’re looking at things from a different perspective.

So what do we do when we’re having a bad day and business must go on?

If you ever find yourself feeling angry, whether justified or not, here’s eight tips on what you can do to avoid creating irreparable situations with your clients:

Exercise. Go for a walk, head to the gym, box with a punching bag. Whatever works for you to do some venting.
Meditate. Or just sit quietly and practice deep breathing.
Yoga. Nothing is better at centering our emotions and getting back in touch with our bodies than practicing yoga.
Watch a funny show or listen to a positive podcast. It’s amazing how quickly your anger can turn around when you’re laughing or receiving positive energy from someone else!
Use the anger as motivation. If you can control the scenario that’s causing your anger, then you can do something about it!
Focus on something more positive. A great thing to do here is think of something you are grateful for and focus on why you’re so grateful about it. Putting yourself in a state of gratefulness will trigger those happy endorphins and will get you out of that pissy mood fast.
Get productive. Feeling on purpose can be quite energizing. If you have something that’s calling your name, get busy and shift your attention to that.
Write in a journal. A great way to release that negative vibe from your body is to write it out. Keep writing until you’ve vented everything that comes to mind. Even if it’s not the same thing that got you angry in the first place – just let it all out!

I’m curious if you have ever experienced someone either getting angry with you in a business relationship or did you lose your cool and get angry with a client or service provider? How did it turn out? What lesson did you learn? And do you have any other tips on how to let go of anger to share?

To your business success,

Susan

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

READ: Learn effective communication principles from an expert. This book from communications specialist Yvonne Douma is a must-read. It will be available on June 8th but you can get yourself on her notification list and grab some great bonuses if you purchase on launch day: REFRAME: How to Change Your Conversations to Resolve Those Messy Conflicts.
WATCH: Have you ever been frustrated by the lack of customer service from another company and vowed to never do business with them again? And most certainly never told anyone else about them? This is why customer service is so vital to business success as I explain in this eTip episode on why it’s the primary reason we have such a high referral rate: How Great Customer Service Gets You Business Referrals (on our website)
READ: I guess all of us have been on the receiving end of a situation where we are not satisfied with customer service. But how do you respond? Read this great piece from Kindi Gill who shares excellent insights on managing difficult client situations: Five Tips for Managing Customer Complaints (on our website)

Susan Friesen, founder of the award-winning web development and digital marketing firm eVision Media, is a Web Specialist, Business & Marketing Consultant, and Social Media Advisor. She works with entrepreneurs who struggle with having the lack of knowledge, skill and support needed to create their online business presence.

As a result of working with Susan and her team, clients feel confident and relieved knowing their online marketing is in trustworthy and caring hands so they can focus on building their business with peace of mind at having a perfect support system in place to guide them every step of the way.