JJ's (Dec. 04) Tips in this issue:

1. Lessons Learned Are Gifts
2. Welcome to the Richmond, VA Crowd
3. JJ's Favorite Quotes
4. Tele-Coaching & Tele-Mentoring

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Use the following tips as training tools.

Present this situation to your group and brainstorm solutions together, or submit your own situation question to be answered in an upcoming newsletter.

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SITUATION QUESTION:
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What kind of Christmas gifts can I give the people I work with that will make our working together more enjoyable?

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SOLUTIONS:
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Gifts come in many forms, and I suggest that you give them and yourself the gift of implementation.

How many times do we read or hear good ideas in a seminar, a book or on the web? We have great intentions to implement them, but when we return to our office, we're bombarded with demands, deadlines and work. Our good intentions and new ideas get put on the shelf. There they sit indefinitely gathering dust.

(Welcome to the Virginia crowd that attended my College of Customer Care seminars in early December. This newsletter will reinforce many of the concepts and lessons that were learned.)

Think back to some of the best ideas you picked up in seminars, and concentrate on implementing them NOW. When you improve your work performance, you create a more desirable workplace for others working with you too. It is your gift.

Best Idea Tip:

Remember how powerful your mind is, and how your positive thoughts are helping you create a better work environment and quality of life.

From the TEPLITZ EMAIL REPORT Volume 3, # 12 December 2004, Optimum Brain Performance Educator

Fly Like An Eagle When Negative Stuff Happens In Your Life

When a storm hits, the way an eagle avoids it is by flying to a high spot and waiting for the winds to start. When they do, the eagle sets its wings so that the wind picks it up and actually lifts it above the storm.

When something negative happens in your life, do you get caught up in the storm or do you use it as a way to grow and expand beyond where you are? When I do my Kinesiology muscle checking presentation, I'm showing people how they can take a negative thought and immediately switch it to a positive one. You have the power to choose to fly above your personal storm. All you have to do is change your focus and fly like an Eagle. Jerry@Teplitz.com, www.teplitz.com.

As Jerry Teplitz wrote about Kinesiology muscle testing in his newsletter, and I demonstrate in my seminars, negative thinking takes your energy away. So, on down days, check your thoughts and change the negative ones to positive affirmations of the direction you want to go.

Other Best Idea Tips:

Every person on your small and large teams is important to the process. Even if you have only internal (employee) customers, you still influence the external customers' buying of your products or services. It is a sort of chain reaction, so remember, everyone is in Sales, Customer Service and Marketing, whether they know it or not.

Your department and company images are only as good as the last interactions with your customers. That is why one person will say a company is the best company to go back to over and over, and another will say it is the worst company to do business with, and they will never return to it again.

Most customers don't return to businesses because of negative attitudes of the personnel. Give your department the gift of a positive attitude, and watch how it influences the others on your team.

Role play a skilled consultant who asks lots of questions, makes suggestions and becomes the customer's best friend. When role playing in your own no-risk environment, work to give honest and helpful feedback to your role playing buddy. Then reverse roles and show them how your feedback would sound and feel. You will both dramatically cut your learning curve using this "peer feedback" method.

You can't change anyone else, you can only change yourself, but when you change yourself enough, you may be able to influence others in a positive direction. It is well worth the effort, and a great gift to others.

Reach out and mentor another and you both grow! When you teach what you have learned, you learn it all over again.

Get off your island (small team) and build some bridges to the other islands (small teams). Then communication and teamwork will improve, and eventually help build a well-oiled big team.

Appreciate your heritage, the gifts our ancestors gave us. My husband and I toured the Virginia area around Jamestown and Williamsburg and we marveled at the colonial lifestyle on the plantations, the slavery and fear of warships or Indians coming to wipe out their new colonies.

We ate peanut soup and rice pudding in an authentic tavern. It was in colonial Williamsburg where every window had a glowing candle in it, and every door had a wreath that was made of fruit and greenery. We kept seeing pineapples everywhere.

Later in the Williamsburg Inn, we asked the woman selling jewelry in the gift shop why there were so many pineapples everywhere, even in the jewelry pieces. She explained that it was a symbol of hospitality. Perhaps all customer service departments and businesses should hang a pineapple over their doors as an invitation to their hospitality.

Allow yourself to go with the flow, but expect wonderful surprises along the way too. As we were leaving the Inn, a woman who seated herself and her tall harp next to the Christmas tree in the entrance started playing Christmas carols. We were mesmerized by the magical sounds that came from the harp. It
caused everyone to smile and give their gifts of hospitality to others as the spirit of the season surrounded them.

Share your gifts of lessons learned, and the lessons to be learned in the spirit of Christmas, and perhaps even hang a pineapple or two too.

May your Christmas be a magical one!

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JJ's FAVORITE QUOTES:
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"Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end, it's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's when youčve had everything to do, and youčve done it."
- Margaret Thatcher

"The secret of success is constancy of purpose."
-Benjamin Disraeli

"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."
- Charles Darwin

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Tele-COACHING & Tele-MENTORING
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DO YOU WANT TO IMPROVE in an area?

Customer service or sales?
Inbound or outbound call center sales and service?
Dealing with irate internal or external customers?
Motivation and growth of your people?
Leading and Coaching your staff?

TRY our one-on-one Tele-Mentoring (phone coaching service) that is available to business owners, executives, managers, supervisors and staff members.

Call for your FREE CONSULTATION now! 800 500-9656 or 408 445-1590

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EVALUATION OF YOUR ENVIRONMENT:
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Have you had an Evaluation of Your Environment lately so you could receive suggestions on improving it? (It's like the doctor's check up, you often don't know you need it, until after you've had it.)

http://www.jjlauderbaugh.com/about.html

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ABOUT JJ:
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JJ Lauderbaugh, CPCM
408 445-1590 or 800 500-9656, 1716 Husted Ave., San Jose, CA 95124.

JJ works with companies that want to give exceptional customer service to increase sales, and with Directors and Call Center/Help Desk Managers who want to improve human performance.

She's an international speaker, trainer, facilitator and certified management consultant (CPCM) on customer service management, specializing in performance improvement, call centers, up/cross selling and outbound calling.

For training resources, free articles, tips and streaming video, go to our

web site at http://www.JJLauderbaugh.com

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Copyright and Reprints:
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Reprint permission is granted when the following credit appears:

© JJ Lauderbaugh, CPCM, Lauderbaugh & Associates, Inc., 2004. Reprinted with permission from JJ's Tips, a monthly internet newsletter. For your own personal subscription, E-mail: jj@jjlauderbaugh.com.
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You can make a difference! Send your questions and comments as they are always welcome.

Thanks,

JJ