Blitz Ezine #253 September 5th, 2005

How to build business relationships

The Blitz-Promotions News Letter
Issue no. 253, September 5th, 2005

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Blitz Comments
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We hope you and yours enjoyed the holiday weekend.

http://smallbizpromo.blogspot.com

Our next issue will be on October 4th.

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In this Issue
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- Building relationships.
- Newsletter stats
- Study tips

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Food for thought
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" SMILE: If you can't lift the corners, let the middle sag."
Author Unknown

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Building Relationships
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Building relationships in your business is very important - it's hard to get good customers, so when you get them it's important to build relationships with them.

Build Power Relationships
By Dr Jill Ammon-Wexler
Executive Advisor
© 2005 All Rights Reserved.

All healthy relationship include some levels of trust and respect. But power relationships are a breed apart. Power relationships are based on especially deep levels of mutual respect and trust . plus the ultimate personality power tool -- authenticity. Here are some tools to help you create the deep levels of authenticity found in power relationships.

Power Tool 1. Relaxation
The more comfortable you are around others, the more comfortable they will feel around you. It a natural human response to pull away from someone who appears nervous or uneasy. The best way to immediately build communication rapport is to smile and relax your body (and especially your face).

This may seem simple, but is very important. A genuine smile presents an open door to communication.

Power Tool 2. Power Listening
Effective communication is far more than just talking - the real key is effective listening. Power communicators focus on what the other person is saying, rather than worrying on how they will respond.

If you have trouble communicating clearly with others, you may want to try the following communication power tool: Mirror their thoughts back to them, and ask them if you properly understood what they said. The simplest way to do is is to paraphrase what they just said to you, and ask them if you properly understood what they meant.

Another good power tool is this: As the other person speaks, pay close attention to their expressions and body language. Try to pick up the deeper emotions revealed by their speech patterns. This is the essence of one especially powerful personal empowerment tool known as NLP (neuro linguistic programming).

Power Tool 3. Provide Recognition
Words either strengthen or weaken trust. It is not always possible to consider the impact of your emotions and words before you speak. In a tough emotion-packed situation, sometimes the best response is to hold your response for a few seconds (or minutes, if possible).

One often overlooked, but extremely valuable power tool is the compliment. People are hungry for recognition. If you compliment someone for the intelligence and insights they've shared with you, you will encourage a relationship of mutual trust and respect. This is such a powerful tool it may amaze you.

Power Tool 4. Provide Support
The ultimate emotional support tool is "empathy." Empathy is a foundation of power communication and simply involves seeing from another person's perspective, regardless of your own opinion or belief.

Is this easy? Nope! But genuine feelings of empathy cement strong bonds of trust. Let people know that you respect them as a person. Offer understanding and encouragement in times of difficulty, and you will build even stronger bonds of trust.

Power Tool 5. Be Authenticity
Acting authentically with others basically involves acting with integrity. At its core, authenticity is simply acting in keeping with your own values. It means being truly honest with both yourself and others.

In a power relationship authenticity is based on being yourself, and avoiding acts that create false appearances. You know how easy it is to spot someone that is putting on an act - we all have this intuitive capability. Being authentic creates deep levels of mutual trust and true respect.

Power Tool 6. Acknowledge Generously
Look for and acknowledge other people's positive qualities. Appreciating their strengths and contributions builds strong bonds of trust.

And remember to acknowledge your most important relationship - the relationship with yourself. Recognize your own qualities, and put them into action. You cannot form a strong relationship with others unless you have first done so with yourself! All relationships radiate out from our relationship to our self.

Power Tool 7. Take Action
Build a power relationship with your own self, and you will easily do so with others. Ask yourself: What thoughts and behaviors will attract the kind of relationships I desire? What one action can I take today to empower my current relationships?

Dr. Jill Ammon-Wexler is a former consultant to the Pentagon and a Presidential Commission, and a personal advisor to success seekers around the world. Her "Take Charge" ecourse is being used by thousands of people in 119 countries around the world. For more information=>
http://www.quantum-self.com/smash_your_limits.htm

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Real World Newsletter Statistics
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I got this note from Aweber and thought you might find it interesting.

-- Real World Newsletter Statistics:

12,561 subscribers in an average customer opt-in newsletter list.

4 minutes and 24 seconds is the average amount of time between when a
customer queues a newsletter and when AWeber completes delivery.

94% of newsletter broadcasts are finished sending within 5 minutes of
when they are scheduled.

98.4% of newsletter broadcasts are finished sending within 30 minutes
of when they are scheduled.

99.34% of all email was delivered successfully in the last 30 days.

0.66% of all email was undeliverable in the last 30 days. (mailbox
closed, non-existent user, etc.)

Average open rate of HTML and Text/HTML newsletters is 29.7% over the
past 30 days.

Sunday generates the highest average open rate of 41.1%, followed by
Saturday at 36.7% for newsletter sent date.

Average Open Rate by Sent Date: (higher is better)

Sunday 41.1%
Saturday 36.7%
Wednesday 34.0%
Friday 32.8%
Tuesday 29.6%
Thursday 24.6%
Monday 23.2%

Sunday generates the fewest undeliverable bounces at 0.36% for
newsletters sent on that date.

Average Undeliverable Rate by Sent Date: (lower is better)

Sunday 0.36%
Saturday 0.45%
Friday 0.47%
Thursday 0.56%
Wednesday 0.77%
Tuesday 0.83%
Monday 0.88%

Monday is the most popular day of the week for customers to send
their newsletters with 17.1% of newsletters being sent.

Percent of newsletters being sent by customers weekly:

Monday 17.1%
Tuesday 17.0%
Thursday 16.2%
Wednesday 15.8%
Friday 14.5%
Saturday 10.3%
Sunday 9.0%

An 8:00 AM EST send time generates the highest open rate of 50.6%.
Interestingly sending at 9:00 AM EST has a significantly lower open
rate of 33.7% with the worst time to send being 3-4 AM at only 19%
open rate.

Plain text messages are the most popular format of sending newsletters
with 65.9% of all newsletters sent. Mime format Text/HTML messages
follow at 23.8% and a remaining 10.2% of customers still send HTML
only messages even though it is strongly recommended to always include
a plain text version.

Plain text messages generate the fewest undeliverable bounces at
0.46%. Mime format Text/HTML follows at 0.56% and HTML only messages
have a whopping 1.09% undeliverable rate. This is a significant reason
behind our recommendation to always send a plain text alternative with
HTML formatted messages.

Subject line personalization using the date generated an average open
rate of 51.4% compared to personalization using the subscriber's first
name generating 40.9% open rate. Newsletters sent without
personalization of any type in the subject line generated average open
rates of 28.9%.

17% of customer newsletter subject lines sent in the last 30 days
contained date personalization while 19% used the subscriber's first
name. 56.3% of subject lines did not contain any type of
personalization. Interestingly, using the subscriber's full name or
last name generated lower average open rates at 20%.

Sincerely,
Tom Kulzer
CEO & Founder
AWeber Communications
http://www.aweber.com

So how can you use this information for your business?

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Links you can use -
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Some great tips for anyone that owns a car.
http://www.advanceautoparts.com/english/youcan/categories.asp

Some help for the kiddies in school -

Study guides from sparknotes -

http://www.sparknotes.com/

Free online tests -

http://quizhub.com/quiz/quizhub.cfm

40 or so Study tips

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Fun and Games
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Learn how stuff works -
http://science.howstuffworks.com/

This is a fun site that talks about the "science" of cooking.
http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/index.html

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Ads
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Discover how I built a downline of 15,000 affiliates
and made a million dollars in sales just by pushing a
button 5 minutes a day! All our top earners are using
this tool: MY AFFILIATE FINDER
http://www.myaffiliatefinder.com/?c=a&i=28119

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Useful links to our site
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Ezine Archives links to all our past issues (well most of them) in one place.

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Next Issues
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Final Thoughts
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Our thoughts and prayers are with those impacted by Katrina.

Tim and Lisa Hamblin
Tisa Enterprises
PO Box 221
Hazard KY 41702
http://www.blitzpromotions.com
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