Betty the Barometer

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Let’s call her Betty the Barometer.

Now this story dates way back to when my hair was still black and I looked more like Mark Spitz than Jay Leno. (not to say I can compare to either of them, but you get my drift).

I was assigned as the Grocery Department manager in a new store.
Towards the end of the second week, I was walking through the store in a terrible mood because the night stocking crew did not complete their assignments and my department was not meeting customer requirements... I probably looked like a chicken with my head cut off because I circled the inside parameter of the store several times barking out orders to my employees and completely ignoring the customers.

Betty, a very petite and soft-spoken meat wrapper with 23 years in the business, had been observing me in my state of frenzy while she was stocking the meat case with fresh cut meat... As I passed by her for the third time, she called out to me.

“Gambone! …come here for second.”

I quickly stopped in my tracks and started walking towards her with a huff and a puff.

“What Betty, can’t you see I’m busy.”

“You know Gambone, that’s your problem, you are too busy. You look like you are ready to explode. What happened to that smiling face I am used to seeing?...and hey, you didn’t even say hi to me this morning!

Well, I don’t know what’s going on in your head but you can’t let your employees and customers see that you are pissed off…we need you to lift us up, not let us down.”

I looked at Betty and said, “Wow Betty, thank you …I never would have thought I'd hear that from you….but you are right…thank you again.”

From that day forward, when I got in a bad mood, I would always check with Betty to see if my “mood” was actually coming to the surface.

We all need a Betty in our lives.

Ask yourself…Who is my “business barometer?”

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***This is just a sample!... if you would like a full slice of "Pecans of Wisdom", be sure to indulge yourself in my book, "Pecan Pie" buy it NOW!    on Amazon.com
“Copyright (9-28-2011) by Robert V. Gambone Sr.”

Beware of The Grazers!

In the supermarket business, we call people who eat all the samples and rarely purchase anything, Grazers.
Guess what?!.... Grazers are everywhere! And to the small businessperson they can eat you alive!

How do you recognize a Grazer? Here are 3 Red Lights!

1.Grazers attend your free seminars, sometimes two or three times but they never commit.
They are very friendly, give you great feedback, and then suddenly they are gone!
2. Grazers love to schedule first meetings with you. They make the meeting all about you; sometimes surprise you by bringing a business partner. Grazers ask you a lot a questions about yourself and particularly all about your business, but when you try to have a follow up meeting to find out more about their business, they make it almost impossible to meet again, or they cancel right before the second meeting.
3. And then there are the EGrazers. They remind me of the people who would eat the sample and then want to fill out an “incident report” claiming they choked or got sick. EGrazers eat up all of your information you have posted on the internet and then use it for their own profit.


What can we do to prevent Grazing? Nothing!, but you can slow it down.

1. Charge a fee for seminar (adds value) and reimburse the fee with purchase.

2. Have an agenda for your meeting or at least know when to stop talking about you and then start asking about them. Say something like, “hey, enough about me for now, let’s talk about you.”

3. Make sure your information on the web is protected, copyright, trademark, etc… best to talk to an expert on this matter.

Al Sandonato, a mentor of mine once said… “Gambone, Grazers will eat everything and never buy anything.”

I would love to continue this discussion. Please email me at bobgambone@bobgambone.com.

***This is just a sample!... if you would like a full slice of "Pecans of Wisdom", be sure to indulge yourself in my book, "Pecan Pie" by it NOW! on Amazon.com
“Copyright (9-18-2011) by Robert V. Gambone Sr.”
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"Got It, Thank you."

Did you ever send an email to someone and then anxiously pondered if they received it?
…of course you did, I have many times.

Today with all the spam, junk and security filters, the reality is our emails (sometimes very important) can be shuffled into the never-to-be-read email abyss!

I know, some of you are saying: well I usually get a “your email was read” return.

Reality check please, those scripts are not very reliable for many reasons (which I will not get into).

Here are 4 simple words to help secure the communication and put the sender at ease:

“Got it, thank you.”….that’s right …simply email them back “Got it, thank you.”

Consider this example:
Imagine sending a potential client a proposal and instead of wondering anxiously if they received it, you get an email back from them that said “Got it, thank you.”… WOW!, you can now exhale.

“Got it, thank you.” is not meant to be an end-all solution and of course you will have to adapt it to your style.

So if you do “get it” ...then simply say, “Got it, thank you."

Pecan Pie: 32 Business Success Strategies Passionately Baked To Order!
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 “Copyright (9-2-2011) by Robert V. Gambone Sr.”