Here are a couple of interesting facts:

• A survey by Management Recruiters International of 730 U.S. executives in 2003 found that 47 percent surveyed wouldn’t use all their vacation time, and 58 percent said that the reason was job pressures. This same study also found that 35 percent said that they had too much work to take a vacation and that 17 percent felt that their boss was not supportive of employees taking all of their vacation days.
• A study by Circadian Technologies found that the average overtime rate in extended-hours businesses in 2004 was 16.2 percent – that is almost one extra day of work each week. This is an increase over the 12.6 percent rate in 2003. Along with the increase in overtime came an increase in the absenteeism rate, up from 5.8 percent in 2003 to 12.4 percent in 2004. Of course this compounds the problem because when people don’t show up for work other people are asked to do overtime to pick up the slack. In general companies with high amounts of overtime had absenteeism rates of 17 percent, versus 9 percent in companies with low amounts of overtime.

To draw a conclusion between these two facts would be premature, but I have a lot of anecdotal evidence to support it. I see a lot of grinding overtime and delayed vacations in the corporate environment where I work. I also see a lot of “pseudo-vacations.” Here are a few examples:

• Employees take their BlackBerries on vacation with them and answer emails – sometimes even if they don’t need to do so.
• I had one colleague tell me he would never go on a cruise because he would be unable to check email or voicemail while at sea.
• Another colleague answered an email at midnight the day before she was scheduled to be induced to give birth.
• I once passed out from a raging fever and a bad case of pneumonia (a weird experience, waking up on the floor half an hour later) right before a meeting because I felt I could not miss it.  Instead of going to the hospital, I dragged myself into the office. Being recently unconscious, my contribution was minimal.
• I know people at work who have missed weddings and funerals and children’s birthdays – because they were “too busy at work.”
• I know more people than I can count who broke up with their boyfriends/girlfriends because they were too busy to maintain their relationships.

Just to keep things in perspective, I’m not a neurosurgeon and my colleagues are not oncologists. No one dies if our work is not done on time. Sure, some critical earnings info might be late or a SOX certification might be delayed, but these are big companies and there are many people to cover the slack. I always need to ask someone who is too busy for vacation: “If you are so mission-critical that you can’t miss work for vacation, would Massive Corporation, Inc. still be able to continue if you were hit by a bus?”

Many colleagues would answer “no” but the truth is “yes.” The corporation will continue if you go on vacation. I sometimes wonder if people are just frightened of demonstrating just how unimportant they are to the overall machinery of the company. I have taken several cruises and long European vacations and never once checked my email or voicemail. Once there was an emergency that needed my attention, but one of my staff stepped up and handled the situation, as I knew they were able.

(this post originally appeared in slightly different form back in 2007)

photo by cell105

too busy for vacation is an original article from the website brip blap.

In a job market like this, it’s not surprising that one open position can receive many, many resumes. Often, your resume might have just a few seconds to make an impression. And that can be difference between getting in your foot in the door or getting that door getting slammed in your face.

Here are a variety of ways to make your resume better:

• Formatting – When used appropriately, bullets and bolding make a huge difference. The perspective employer  isn’t going read one long paragraph.  You may have noticed that this article is written with scannability in mind.
• Grammar and spell check – Microsoft Word provides a very good grammar checking tool. Spell checking tools are so abundant that  there’s no excuse for not using one. In such a competitive landscape, one spelling error could get you labeled as lacking attention to detail.
• Consistent tense and use of phrasing – This is one that a lot of people miss – and the one I have the most difficulty with, myself. Sometimes I don’t know whether to put older jobs in the past tense and current jobs in the present. That’s where it helps to have experts like those at Pongo Resume to help. Always stick either full-sentences or fragments. Switching back and forth between the two will only confuse the reader.
• Have more than one friend review it – Sometimes you spend so much time on you certain parts of your resume that you miss the obvious. Your friends will be looking with a fresh eye, just as a potential employer would.

Even if you have great form to your resume, there’s no guarantee to you’ll get the job. Experience, education, and the interview process are very important – the key is to make sure you don’t get passed by before you get show off those skills.

How To Fix covers a wide-ranging set of topics including household repairs such as how to fix a toilet and How to Fix a Lamp as well as computer topics like how to speed up your computer.

photo by dbdbrobot

photo by

How to Fix Up Your Resume (guest post) is an original article from the website brip blap.

What can I say?  I had “Der Kommisar” stuck in my head for six months.  Help me, please.  Warn me of other songs to avoid.

(Here’s the video link in case the embed doesn’t show up…)

I’m going to work on solidifying the posting schedule, and finishing my (major) blog theme revision soon. Blogging’s tough work, especially after you’ve been after it for 2-3 years and feel like you don’t have much more to say.  I often feel like I’ve been to the well once too often, which is (probably) my own mental shortcoming…

I make money off of blogging, but not enough to make me highly devoted to it. I like writing, but I feel that I’m not on-topic enough to keep people involved – I’d be happy to accept some (positive) criticism.  I toy with the idea of abandoning any specific topic from time to time – but then again sometimes I think I should just switch brip blap to an astronomy blog.  It’s tough to know what to do when you don’t really know what you, yourself, want to do.

And from a lifestyle perspective, having permanent summer is working well for me so far. We took the family biking today, November 15th, to the beach.  In shorts and t-shirts.  In a crisp blue cloudless sky.  Did I mention it’s November?  It may not mean much to most, but I’ve been cheered tremendously by the absence of winter.

And finally, I had some commentary on these links, but Microsoft’s Live Writer is acting up on me as I try to watch the Indy-New England game and I don’t have the patience to fix it. Good stuff, and I particularly liked the “Disposable” link.  Plus, I don’t like Gary Vaynerchuk, to be honest.  Go to the comments on the link and you’ll see why.

• Who Earns More in Your Marriage?
• How to Create a Personal Finance Firewall
• Start Making Year-End Tax Moves Now and Save Big Money
• Adventures in Dallas (and how we saved money there)
• Losing My Wallet
• Home Buyer Tax Credits Are Working??!!
• How to Save Money with High Deductible Health Plans and Understanding Health Savings Accounts
• Not All Cheap Houses Are True Bargain Homes
• Prepare Now for Next Year’s Tax Bill
• “What Works For You” Can Be a Trap
• Disposable
• How Adam Baker and Gary Vaynerchuk Put me in a Rut:
• The Deadly Internal Audit
• Choose Your Words Carefully… You May Have to Eat Them.

linklings, the lady gaga edition is an original article from the website brip blap.

I saw the movie “The Bucket List” and, to put it charitably, I sneered. It was a tear-jerker, a four-hankie sobfest and I didn’t care for the moralistic tone.  Yet the more I thought about it, I wondered why it was such a bad idea, despite the silly movie.  Why shouldn’t we have a bucket list?

Depending on what day of the week you catch me on, I’ll have one of three ideas about the reason for human life:

1. Continuation of the species (with the admittedly naive caveat that it should be continued AND improved, not just continued)
2. Creation of art, exploration of the universe and better understanding of humanity (and all life).
3. Maximization of one’s own self-development (ideally for the benefit of all but ultimately for your own benefit).

#1 and #2 aren’t easy – but #3 is a bear. I’m not even going to link to it, but if you visit Steve Pavlina’s blog and read about his experiment with polyamory (extending love to other people not your spouse) you’ll see that you can make things very difficult for the ones you love in the name of “self-development.”  If you go off to meditate on the mountain for a year, fine, but if you have three kids, or a sick parent, or a dog, then maybe self-development’s a bit selfish in the short run.

Be that as it may, I think that you can’t neglect any one of these three reasons without a little bit of loss. You don’t have to have kids, for example, to help with reason #1 but you should put some effort into the betterment of mankind “after you.”  You don’t have to create art or discover Planet X, but you ought to somehow move humanity’s knowledge forward to support #2.  And you don’t have to become a self-centered ass to address point #3, but you ought to spend a little bit of time on making yourself a bit better than you were a day/week/year ago.

My bucket list is ill-formed. I have a few things that I have always dreamed of, which probably sound tedious…but they are mine…

1. I’d like to visit the Forbidden City. Despite being a frenetic world traveler, I’ve never been to China, a country I’ve read about endlessly.  Why?  Dunno.  I have no racial/ancestral/etc. connections to China, but I’ve always been curious about it.  Singapore’s the closest I’ve been.
2. I’d like to visit the Gobi Desert. No reason, other than wanting to see it.  I’ve been to Siberia already, so you’d think I’d have had my share of desolate areas, but no.   I would like to stand in the desert and proclaim that these three things are best in life:  to vanquish your enemies, see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women (bonus points for identifying the pop culture reference).
3. I’d like to write a book. Why?  Because I like to think of myself as the type of person who could write a book.
4. I’d like to run a marathon.  I am in horrible running shape (although I still bike long distances).  I know I could do it, though – when I was running on a frenetic basis I could run half-marathons without much effort.
5. I’d like to see my grandchildren (not as much of a given as it might be for other, younger, parents – I’ll be 74 when Little Buddy is the same age as I was when I had my first child).  Small thing, but then again, a big thing.
6. I want to visit Bubelah’s childhood home in the former Soviet Union. And I want to take my kids to Moscow.  Why?  Because that city almost screams with history, both personal and global.
7. I’d like to take care of Bubelah in her 80s (no small accomplishment since then I’d be in my 90s).  That’s a bucket list item that’s almost in the bucket, just not quite..

etc.

Anybody can put together a travel list, and it’s odd that most “bucket lists” I see are highly concentrated on travel and skydiving. I could give less of a hoot about skydiving/surfing/etc. – that’s just not me.  Other “must do’s” aren’t on my list, either.  I don’t have much desire, for example, to read “Crime and Punishment.”  I’d LIKE to be the type of person who had that on my bucket list, but I’ve started that damn book a half dozen times and every time I fall asleep before I’ve hit the 100th page.

One thing I do know is that although some of the bucket list items don’t require a dime to accomplish, many of them require a fair million dimes to accomplish. Money’s not necessary to buy happiness, but if you want to visit China with kids (i.e. hostels and super-budget travel being out of the question), money’s going to make the journey easier.

So while I’m not the guy who’s going to sniffle if I never parasail or eat monkey brains (had the chance, took a pass), I do think I’d benefit from making a list and starting to check it off.  Maybe I’ll start today. Maybe you should, too.

photo by FranciscoDiez

the bucket list is an original article from the website brip blap.

Yet every time a trickle of money enters my account, they call.  If I make a shift in my investments, they call.  The simple fact?  I don’t need help.  I have a simple investing strategy that anyone can follow.  It’s not original to me, but it’s barely original to anyone else, either.

I split my money 40-20-20-20 between market index funds, overseas index funds, bond index funds and “other” – stocks, odd mutual funds, etc.  I rebalanced today due to the fact that I just rolled over my 401(k).  It’s not rocket science, either.  I looked at my current allocations and built a spreadsheet to tell me what I’d need to do to get back to that formula.

Is that formula the path to wealth?  Beats the hell out of me.  You know what it is, though?  It’s the investment strategy that lets me sleep at night.  It’s the investment strategy that reduces risk to the point I’m comfortable. 

I read a lot of tortuous investment information and a lot of maximize-your-gains type screeds on the internet and I always have to wonder: why?  I want investment that let me sleep at night.  Is investing 20% of my net worth in bonds going to cost me some returns in the long run?  Perhaps.  Is it going to let me sleep at night?  Maybe.  If it does, it’s priceless. 

Don’t over think investments.  Pick a strategy and stick to it.  I did, and it’s worked well enough to date.  I’m not exactly retiring to the Taj Mahal on my investments, but I’m doing well enough for a middle-class American.  Take a conservative approach to investing – a simple allocation or a similar strategy -  and I doubt you’ll go wrong.

how to manage money is an original article from the website brip blap.

As noted in this article (October 2009 Unemployment Rate 10.20% – Chart of the Day) unemployment’s high.  Too high.  I was in the 10.2% for about a week, but as of next week I’m right back at it with the same client after they got a budget increase.  Although I’m glad to return to work, what with the economy the way it is, I’m a little bit sad that my “break” only lasted about 7 days.  It was a very productive break in almost every category (except, obviously, blogging).  We made a trip to visit relatives, I got a lot of the paperwork related to our looming close on our new house done, and I even managed to surprise my son by picking him up from school on my bike. 

So due to the busy week, I’ll fly through a few links:

• Relocating To End Unemployment: Ten Things To Consider:  I didn’t specifically relocate to find work, but it’s not the worst idea.  One of my colleagues at my client does this routinely.  It’s tough to buy, sell, buy, sell (not to mention tough on his kids) but it might be better these days to be flexible.
• Best Ways To Invest Small Amounts of Money:  If you get $100 extra dollars, I’m not sure I’d apply it to bad debt, but otherwise – solid tips.  Invest in yourself – that’s never bad advice.
• Americans Not Ready for Retirement:  In the category of “where are all of the 80 year olds going to work, exactly”?
• Energy Gal’s Easy Homemade Hummus Recipe:  We make hummus from time to time, without the blender – I just use a fork, a bowl and lots of what the old-timers called “elbow juice.” 
• College Savings Accounts for a Bad Economy
• Our Journey To Debt Freedom: Cresting The Hill
• Finding Time for Positive Change
• How to Save on Health Care Without Skimping on Quality
• When Money Doesn’t Matter
• How to Earn Income for the Rest of Your Life: The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Annuities

linklings, dude, where’s my break? edition is an original article from the website brip blap.

When I was younger, I was uninterested in the world outside the US. Things changed when I won a scholarship to study in Germany at the age of 15. I had a terrific experience, both personally and academically, that inspired me to continue my German studies and gave me the motivation to return to live and work in Germany someday . One of the main reasons I went into accounting was the knowledge that it was a worldwide profession – business travel, international business, and so on made it likely that I would have a shot at going overseas sometime in my work life.

During college I decided that I had studied German long enough and that I would fulfill my language requirements with courses in Japanese. This being the late 80s, Japan’s economy was on fire, and knowing Japanese seemed like a good idea. But when I showed up at the registrar to sign up for Japanese I found that the course was full. The university I went to had a fairly limited selection of languages, including mostly the usual suspects – French, German, Spanish and Italian. Despairing that I’d be stuck with a “boring” language, I noticed they had a course in Russian, so I signed up for that. I figured I could do fairly well in this language that was, at the time, a pointless diversion.

In the late 80s there was no real reason to suspect that (a) Russia would ever be open to Westerners or (b) a place that would offer any sort of opportunities to anyone other than academics and writers. That would of course change, but at the time the immediate usefulness of Russian was limited. Despite that, I studied Russian, and my professor – Dr. Don – was a real inspiration and one of the two or three best teachers I’ve ever had. He was young, enthusiastic, accessible and had a real passion for languages and linguistics. I stayed in the class past the minimum requirements and went on to be one of the first two Russian minors in my school’s history.

So approximately five years later, in late 1995, I was approached by a partner in the consulting firm I was working in. I had told everyone quite frequently that I wanted to work in Germany, and the partners had told me they would keep an eye out. Of course, Germany didn’t lack for accountants (still doesn’t), so the idea of me working there had a slim chance of success. However, the partner told me that they had received an unusual request from the Moscow office for short-term assistance for any Americans. The partner knew I had a Russian minor, and asked if I was interested.

Of course I was! I jumped at the chance. I did a phone interview and was all set to go in February of 1996. I flew to Russia and realized on the taxi ride into Moscow that I didn’t even remember the word for snow (”snyeg” if you’re curious). My Russian was rusty, in the sense that the Titanic is now a bit rusty. I had a lot of adventures in Russia, both in my initial four month stint and in my return for a year and a half for a different company, and in further visits and business trips there.

I took away five critical points from my work in Russia. I think these points are useful if you’re considering working overseas, or want a big-time corporate job. I’m not sure working in England would give you the same cachet as more exotic locations like Russia or Indonesia or China, but it might. See if the cons – a remote location, some hardships and an oft-over-exaggerated sense of danger – outweigh these pros.

1. I learned a foreign language really well – not just grammar, but some slang, intonation, and so on. This is only moderately useful if the language in question is Russian, but considering Russia has one of the hottest economies in the world and is used as a lingua franca throughout Central Asia, it is more useful than Italian or German.

2. I embraced a culture and by doing so, became more open to all cultures. I wasn’t close minded or terribly parochial, but I really learned what it was like to be immersed in a culture fairly alien to one’s own. I can’t say I went native. I lived in an apartment that cost 10 times what the normal Russian could pay. I spent more on a meal and drinks on a date than most Russians would see in a month. I had an Internet connection and a state-of-the-art computer. But I did make friends, and spent time at their homes and talking with them and doing things with them on the weekends that a lot of my colleagues – who uniformly didn’t speak Russian – never did. And that experience made it that much easier for me to relax in the future when I went to other countries around the world (although I never got comfortable with midnight steak dinners in Argentina…)

3. I learned true independence. If you want to learn how to deal with customer service problems in the US, try standing in line at the Russian phone service center and arguing with a 50 year old grandmother in Russian about your disconnected phone bill. And if that example’s too mild, try going cross-country in a four-wheel drive with two bodyguards to a former prison camp surrounded by radioactive wastelands, then eating lunch with a sobbing drunken bank director choking out patriotic Soviet songs while eating toasted pine cone seeds. If you don’t feel a little bit lost during that experience and a little bit more confident about handling yourself after it’s over.

4. I gained tremendous work experience. I had to constantly work not only on accounting, but on three different types (US, Russian and international), all while constantly switching back and forth between two languages, managing clients and handling a huge workload. I had been managing a staff of maybe 1 person, auditing $2 million dollars in sales per year companies at home. The next year, in Moscow, I was managing 25 people on an audit of one of the biggest clients of my firm in Russia, with audit fees alone of $2 million.

5. I created a massive shining bright spot on my resume that, twelve years later, still draws more attention, more conversation and more interest than anything else I’ve ever done. I’ve worked since then in locations from Turkey to Argentina, and nothing compares to the shock and amazement your average corporate worker expresses to me when they found out I worked in Russia. It has gotten my foot in the door at several companies; it has wowed recruiters and it has become an endless source of anecdotes that seem to fascinate people (or it could be just that they are polite but I think I can tell the difference).

If you’re planning on getting a job in the corporate world, you should consider a stint overseas, preferably someplace that isn’t ’safe’. At every step of my career there have been people competing with me for positions, assignments and promotions. Many went to better schools, had more certifications, had better connections or frankly were smarter or better looking. But I have yet to encounter many who could top the conversational firestorm I can usually unleash by dropping “that reminds me of the time I got arrested by Russian immigration on a business trip in Vladivostok” or “at least no-one is getting assassinated like the general director of my client in Moscow” and so on.

I suppose that despite my appearance, my mild southern accent or my calm outward appearance my willingness to go work in the wild East in the mid-90s, when things were just 30 minutes away from total chaos in Russia, makes me look like a super-confident, devil-be-damned risk taker to some people. It’s not true; I am a conservative guy in most of my actions. However, the appearance is enough to provide an ‘in’, and that’s usually what it’s all about in appearance-conscious corporate America.

(this post originally appeared on brip blap, in a slightly different form, in July 2007).

photo by Steve

how working overseas helps your career is an original article from the website brip blap.

I know I usually publish these link roundups on the weekends, and recently they’ve gotten huge. I may try to do two separate posts in the future, rather than one enormous one each week. Or I may do what I’m doing today – write a lot about a few articles and then just link to some other good ones. But they are worth reading, in my opinion – if you have the time. But last week’s did get a little bit out of control, so I’m ramping back down a bit for this one.

What if You were Required to Share your Finances?: I always think pro athletes have to put up with something most of us would find abhorrent – public announcements of their salaries. You’d have to deal with knowing your teammates’ salaries – some of their salaries might make you mad. You might be playing better than another teammate, but making less, and you’d have to know it. Norway’s publishing the tax records of ALL citizens. I think it would be interesting if we could all look up each other’s salaries. It would make life a lot tougher for recruiters and HR and corporations, but it might be a step in the right direction. We require it of our public officials and expect it of our pro athletes, so why not?

10 Steps to Declutter and Simplify Your Finances: It’s easy to overlook the value of simplifying your finances when you’re worried, first and foremost, about making money. Yet decluttering your finances helps you get a clearer picture of your overall financial position, and allows you to spend less time managing your money and more time making it. I went through a huge decluttering process, starting about a year before I got married. It took two years of gradual change to close all the store accounts (dozens!), checking accounts (3! for a single guy!), brokerage accounts (7!) and credit cards (I had gas cards, airline cards, you name it). Having a clear picture of our finances has made it easier to manage our finances and let us spend more time on other things.

Credit Cards To Charge Good Behavior Fees: I’ve written about the demonization of the credit card industry before. I’ve seen some significant grumbling online about credit card companies starting to charge people for paying off their balance in full. I can’t say I’d be happy if they did it, since we pay off our three credit cards in full every month, but I’d understand. It’s a service, like any other, and we’ve used it for free for years. I know the merchants we use are paying a fee and passing it on to us, and some people think that’s how we are being charged. But really, if I make $600+ a year in cash back rewards, does a charge of $35 a year – or something like that – for the use of the card make it a bad deal for me? Nope. Will I get rid of at least one of our three cards? Nope. Bubelah and I like having one “family” card and two personal cards just in our own names.

Other links:

• Lending Club’s New Statistics Page Looks Good
• Outsourcing Your Investing Decisions
• 7 Easy Ways You Can Save Money in College
• What’s Your Currency?
• Finding the Value in Money
• What Makes Wealthy People Wealthy
• Money Management Software For The Desktop: YNAB 3 Review

photo by josef.stuefer

linklings, rethinking the linking edition is an original article from the website brip blap.

Who doesn’t like to sit around and daydream? I daydream about going on a cruise again. The fact that I daydream about cruises surprises me a bit: I like to think of myself as an adventurous traveler and cruising is not the same as hiking the Gobi. Another person who might be surprised is Bubelah, who probably thinks that I’ve become allergic to vacations since we’ve had kids. But it’s my daydream, and although I can direct my thoughts towards visiting Suzdal, I guess I’m the guy with black socks, sneakers and a t-shirt that says “My wife is a Parrothead, too.”

It’s just a mental break.

Most corporate offices don’t allow access to Gmail or Facebook or, well, anything related to life on the web in the 21st century. I understand, because they’d like to imagine that your “outside” life slams shut the second you walk in the door. The same boss that expects you to check emails “in case of an emergency” while you’re on vacation would turn around and fire you for taking a few minutes a day to send an email from your Hotmail account to your sister who’s going in for a root canal. Such is life.

I tried getting around this mindset once in a while by carrying my little Asus EEE with me to work and taking my lunch at the local Einstein Brothers. I don’t NEED to check email that frequently but taking myself off the clock for a walk to a pleasant little shop with wifi and bagels and some muted jazz is a nice break from flickering fluourescent lights and Outlook. Eating a bagel melt (turkey, tomato and cheddar) with iced green tea and checking in on Brizzly, Disqus and yes, Gmail, is a moment of fun in an otherwise boring-yet-profitable day. And no, I don’t charge the client, although I should: they benefit from me being sharper, less distracted and more alert after going for a nice brisk walk in summerlike mid-October Florida.

It’s a mental break.

Like most parents, I’ve gotten bored with all but the most charming children’s books from time to time. I’ve made up a continuing series of stories revolving around the land of Vegetaria (where Mr. Potato and Ms. Carrot deal with the bumbling-and-grumpy Mayor Pickle, and occasionally visit the Black Castle, home of the Smurfs). I also frequently tell stories about the Big Bad Wolf, who has adventures ranging from the mundane (a light is burnt out! time to go to the light store and ask the Grumpy Old Troll what kind of light bulb we need!) to the weird (he takes a blimp to the clouds and has a picnic in front of the Castle-in-the-Clouds).

It’s a mental break – for me.

What does it mean?

I don’t think of myself as being that creative, but I can tell a children’s story like nobody’s business – off the top of my head.

I don’t think of myself as being subject to the same mental flagellation as a corporate employee – and I give myself permission not to act like one.

I think of myself as one type of person – but when I let my mind wander I’m not that kind of person.

When I let my mind go to the person I am instead of the person I sometimes mistakenly force myself to think I am.

That’s cool.

photo by Darren Shilson

the cruise, the bagel and the black castle is an original article from the website brip blap.

Ever heard the phrase “the customer is always right?” That phrase comes from the American founder of the British retail chain Selfridges (coincidentally named Harry Gordon Selfridge). Managing customers or clients can be a challenge for anyone in business, from a freelancer to a manager for a big corporation. I use the word “challenge” because Bubelah’s let me know that I use the word “problem” too frequently – but let’s face it, managing customers can be a problem. I work as a contract consultant where I have to sell and deliver, and I’ve learned that there is one surefire way to keep customers happy.

Mistakes are easy to make when dealing with good customers, and disasters are easy when working with stubborn or (they do exist) stupid customers. Too often the seller (who can be selling anything: goods, services or even free services) starts jumping through hoops to repair the situation. Some of the solutions:

• Offering credits
• Lower prices
• More “face time”
• Throwing around perks – taking a client out for drinks, etc.

None of these solutions are BAD ideas, but they won’t keep the seller’s customer happy forever. You know what keeps a customer happy? If the seller LISTENS.

Am I saying the customer’s always right? Well, yes, but you can’t rely on the customer to always TELL you what you need to hear. Sometimes you have to read between the lines. Sometimes you have to listen to what other sellers are offering your customer. Listening takes many forms, but it’s not the same thing as “hearing.”

Selling is often as simple as listening for your customer’s need rather than trying to tell them how YOUR product/service will help them. Let them establish the need. You may learn something that helps you expand your service or offer them a slightly different product.

I am hired for my professional skills in audit, compliance or finance. Yet I find again and again that if I sit down with clients I’ll find out they have challenges (see, I remembered to use the right word!). They share these challenges without any expectation that I can fix them, sometimes, but I make an effort to understand what their need is and then fix it – or find someone else who can. Maybe I understand their accounting systems, or know someone who does. Maybe I can connect them with a subject matter expert. Perhaps I can lead a training course for their staff or give them tips on the social web (you’d be surprised how many corporate types are unaware of LinkedIn, for example). Listening to what they need doesn’t take the place of doing the work they hired me for, but the extra value – something they might not even realize they needed – will make me more valuable to them.

Don’t assume that doing your best on a service or closing sales of a product alone will be enough. Keep your ears open. Wait one second AFTER your customer has stopped speaking before answering (you’d be surprised how much people appreciate that simple courtesy). Make the time to get to know your customer and never stop listening to what they need. The customer will eventually be right, but it’s your job to help him figure out what’s right.

photo by chanchan222

how to keep a customer happy is an original article from the website brip blap.