by Alan | Apr 20, 2006 | Communication skills, Delivery, Leadership, Toastmasters
Struck up a conversation with a fellow Toastmaster today on “What makes the difference?” We watch Toastmasters and speakers all the time. Some get better and some do not. Some offer lots of ways for their evaluator to help them, some barely even offer a...
by Alan | Apr 18, 2006 | Communication skills, Customer Service, Delivery, Don't!
It’s a common tactic for presenters who want to appear more interactive, give their audiences a chance to warm up, and kill a bunch of time. The personal introductions. But they rarely work, and never work in large groups. A group of 50 tonite spent an hour...
by Alan | Apr 15, 2006 | Communication skills, Customer Service, Delivery, Sales
Found myself with a dying cell phone battery, a lost mobile charger, and three phone calls to make the other day. Began each conversation with something along the lines of “I’ve got thirty seconds of battery left, tell me ____”. In another...
by Alan | Apr 5, 2006 | Business, Communication skills, Leadership
As most of America (and the world does), I have the “opportunity” to sit in a lot of group meetings. And I spend the vast majority of my time in them figuring out one of two things: 1) how much this meeting is costing the organization (and was it worth...
by Alan | Apr 2, 2006 | Customer Service, Delivery
Just back from a few days off with the family. A rare vacation — no agenda, no places we HAD to go, nothing we HAD to do. Nice.Except for the desk clerk at the “award-winning, customer-driven, best-in-the-chain, excellence-is-our-standard” hotel we...
by Alan | Feb 28, 2006 | Business, Communication skills, Leadership
A friend was discussing his “merit increase” at his job. Seems that the HR department at his firm toes the line pretty firmly on that terminology. But they also have failed to implement any sort of formal evaluative compensation program, thus making it...
