Hey, It’s Okay to Cut Your Client List! 5 Ways to Say Goodbye

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from David Neagle. The Million Dollar Income Acceleration Mentor and author of The Millions Within, teaches entrepreneurs and commission-based sales professionals how to quantum leap their current incomes past the 7-figure income level, often in less than 12 months. As a world-class speaker, sales trainer, and success-mindset mentor to some of the globe’s top CEOs, David also privately mentors big decision-makers in their pursuit of quantum success and peace of mind. Did you like this article? Tweet this: “It’s Okay To Cut Your Client List! 5 Ways To Say Goodbye #Neagle”

Most companies’ biggest concern is finding – and keeping – clients and customers. This makes sense: Without customers, there’s nothing for businesses to do.

But what happens when you’re no longer worried about acquiring more business? What should you do when you have too much business, and too many customers, for your resources to handle? It’s a good problem to have, but it’s still a problem. How do you solve it?

One amusing way to frame the problem is through the scope of a break-up in a romantic relationship. Some of the same “rules” apply to breaking up with customers. After all, the relationship between a company and its customers is just that: a relationship. As we all know, relationships don’t always work out. Here are a few phrases that might ring true:

1.  “You’re too needy.” Overly needy people aren’t just draining in the dating world. As clients, they can actually cost you a lot in time, energy, and productivity. Needy or unproductive clients are the ones who are rarely satisfied with a product or service, despite the quality; they’re the ones who will always find something wrong. The costs of working with someone like this can sometimes outweigh the benefits of even having him as a customer!

2.  “It’s not you, it’s me.” When you realize you have a very unproductive, needy customer, realize that by letting him go, you can probably solve both your problem and your client’s. Chances are if a client is never satisfied with what you offer, it just isn’t “meant to be.” If he’s constantly acting dissatisfied, realize you’re probably not the best business for his needs. Let him find a business that better fits him, because it isn’t yours. (If you love them, set them free!)

3.  “We can still be friends.” You don’t want to alienate a former or potential client by telling him the business equivalent of “this isn’t working,” and brushing him off. Just like at the end of a romantic relationship with someone you care a great deal for, treat the client with respect. Keep available a list of businesses that offer services similar to yours. When you’re dealing with a customer who’s costing you more than he’s worth, be prepared to offer him another option. Present it in a way that shows you’re looking out for his best interests – and not just turning him away.

4.  “I’m out of your league.” Don’t be afraid to be selective! This will help you find your ideal clients and reach them more effectively. In other words, it’s more valuable to invest more time and energy in a few ideal clients than in several unproductive ones. First, though, determine who your ideal client base is. You can do this by looking at your current set of clients and asking some questions. “Who are our best clients? What beliefs/values/needs do they have?” This, along with practical factors, like the ability of the client to pay, will help you develop a set of criteria that you can use to determine your “A-list” clients. Once you have that A-list, maintain it by really focusing on those clients’ needs and how you can best meet them. Treat them like a significant other you’d like to keep!

5.  “I know you want me.” When you need to let clients go because of resource limitations, you want to maintain an image of being in high demand, rather than sending the message that, well, you’re unable to expand as a company. How do you do that? Really, the best solution is to avoid the short-on-resources situation in the first place! It’s a very preventable issue. Take time to form the vision of where you want your company to go, and then implement strategies and plans so when an influx of business comes, you’ll be prepared to handle it. Sometimes, there really is enough love to go around.

Breaking up is hard to do, and the business world is no exception. Focus on the benefits that can be gained by letting go of an unproductive customer. Proceed with caution (don’t break any hearts!), and your relations with clients can stay positive – even if you have to move on.

Featured photo credit:  Two tiny miniature figurines via Shutterstock

View the original article here

Goodbye, Sparrow! 8 Alternatives to Sparrow for Email

So, you were looking for a great alternative to Apple’s Mail.app on OS X and iOS and stumbled upon Sparrow. It was fast, handled mail in a comfortable and familiar Gmail fashion, and was full featured. It was all good until you heard that there will be no more new features coming to it because of Google buying out the company. And, if the past is any indication (it is), Sparrow will eventually be discontinued. So, rather than sink with the ship, try one of these 8 Sparrow alternatives to ensure that your email client is covered into the future.

It seems counterintuitive to recommend Sparrow to get away from Mail.app and then Mail.app to get away from Sparrow, but Mail.app has proven to be quite the workhorse. With all of the updates that came with Lion last year, Mail.app is definitely a great Mail client to use.

Also, because of Mail.app’s integration with OS X and iOS, it’s one of the only ways that you can do fun things like email to OmniFocus inbox or setup some serious rules and filters.

iCloud Mail is getting better too, but it’s a very minimal version of the desktop client and can only be used with an iCloud email account; so, that’s not very useful for people that use other email accounts and need more robust features that the desktop client offers

Postbox (Windows and OS X)

Postbox has been around for a number of years now and the creators consider it to be the best desktop Gmail client for Mac and Windows. Now with Sparrow “gone”, I’d probably have to agree. Postbox is a full featured email client that supports IMAP and POP accounts as well as Exchange (for all of us corporate types out there). Another added nicety is that Postbox supports OmniFocus and Evernote integration. Good stuff.

Postbox’s UI feels great in OS X and gives the user a vast set of features like Gmail integration, multiple account support, social network photos for your contacts, a threaded message view and more. Oh, and Postbox is only $9.95.

If you are solely a Gmail user and love the Gmail experience, then Mailplane may be the app for you. Mailplane is basically a UI wrapper around the Gmail client for OS X. Mailplane adds a lot of niceties to the web experience of Gmail like being able to get Growl notifications or even link documents on your Mac to an email. You can also have unlimited Gmail accounts in Mailplane.

Mailplane is a tad expensive ($24.95), especially considering the more feature rich Postbox is less than half that, but if you are a Gmail UI nerd, then Mailplane may work for you.

When Sparrow for iPhone came out it instantly replaced Mail.app (as much as you can replace Mail.app) on my iPhone, but before that I was using Emailganizer. The only two things I can’t stand about Emailganizer is its shoddy name and its shoddy design and UI. Other than that, Emailganizer is a super powerful app that has some great features like recognition of “context folders” (@action, @waiting, etc.), support for basically any email provider or account type you can think of, add emails as tasks to Exchange, Toodledo, OmniFocus, Things, etc., attach emails to the iOS Calendar, and more.

Emailganizer is a robust email client for your iPhone. Too bad there isn’t an iPad version yet!

No matter what anyone says, Outlook is a pretty great email application and if you are in a medium to large company it’s pretty much standard issue email software. With the newer versions of Outlook you get threaded message views, built in calendar and tasks, extremely intelligent filters and auto responders, searching and filtering on any item and field you could imagine as well as support for any type of email account.

It isn’t cheap ($119), but Outlook for Mac is a great email tool that can definitely replace Sparrow on your Mac.

While we can’t say that Notify is a full bore email client, it does a great job of notifying you of and allowing you to preview emails and with its pro features allows you to delete, file them, or respond to them as well. Notify is more of a small app that notifies you of important emails that so you can handle them immediately, which is better than being notified of every email and being interrupted while you are working.

MailMate for Mac is a full featured IMAP email client. It supports multiple accounts and is highly “keyboard centric”, meaning that the entire app can be driven with keyboard shortcuts. There are also some great unique features like Markdown support in the email compose box as well as “Smart Mailboxes” that allow you to create smart filters and base other smart mailboxes on previous smart mailboxes. The search in MailMate is top notch as well; it’s fast and accurate.

MailMate is $29.99 but you can pick up a free trial to see if it’s a good alternative for you.

If you can stay with Sparrow just a little longer (like till the end of Summer?), then you can give Mail Pilot a spin. Mail Pilot got a lot of great press for being the company to “reimagine email”. But, more than marketing fluff, it looks like Mail Pilot might actually do it. Basically, Mail Pilot turns your email into a todo list and lets you mark items as done or even gives you some advanced controls to review them later. Mail Pilot will support all major email services, give you a single login, and even a cool smart “Autopilot” feature that lets you mark specific emails for review at a certain time (like all newsletters for a certain day of the week).

CM Smith is a technologist, writer, and husband. He holds a degree in MIS and CMPSC from Penn State. CM is also interested in personal productivity, creativity and how to use technology to get things done. Check out his writing at devburner.net or follow him on Twitter.

View the original article here

Say Goodbye to Password Purgatory with LastPass [Video]

Well, maybe not goodbye. But perhaps…adieu?

We all struggle with passwords. Protecting our own personal information and accounts is an arduous task at best — that is if we pay much attention to it at all.

It is imperative to use unique, secure passwords for all your sites — not just your bank account. Rather than post-it notes, text files, or even keeping all your passwords nicely organised in your address book, take ten minutes now and check out LastPass, a (mostly) free password manager.

To recap, here are some of the features that LastPass has to offer:

Never lose passowrdsAuto fill optionsGenerate difficult to remember (or hack passwords)A different pasword for every accountAvailable for Mac, Windows and LinuxMobile-ready for iOS, Android BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and even WebOS

Now that you’ve got a working knowledge of this phenomenal software-as-a-service, it’s time to install LastPass and escape password purgatory forever. Not only will you have a safer selection of passwords, you’ll have leveled up your productivity in the process.

And that’s the kind of password hack worth trumpeting.

(Photo credit: Password in Binary Code via Shutterstock)

Check out Steve's weekly Podcast at www.dottotech.com Steve Dotto is one of Canada's most respected geeks. For over 15 years, as host and executive producer of Dotto Tech, a nationally syndicated TV show, Steve has entertained and educated millions of Canadians on all aspects of technology. Steve now hosts Dotto Tech as a weekly radio show and podcast. A very popular speaker, Steve is in demand addressing audiences on the changes technology is bringing to the workplace, and our society. Steve has one mission, to help us master our technology, at home, at school or at work, his message....we need to be in charge.

View the original article here

Goodbye Colombia, for now

A few days ago I moved back to the UK after spending three years working in beautiful Colombia.

I had the pleasure of learning from some fantastic colleagues and managed to find myself working across the country from the Amazon to the Andes.

As a small and inevitably inadequate token of my appreciation I’d like to thank my colleagues in Médecins Sans Frontières from across Colombia, colleagues from the Hospital Universitario San Vicente de Paúl and the Universidad de Antioquia in Medellín, as well as the many other fantastic mental health professionals who helped me along the way and tolerated my enthusiastic but ‘freestyle’ Spanish.

I arrived in Bogotá to find Alonso, a particle physicist, had organised ‘neurobeers’ which were both enormously good fun and full of fantastic folks. Much appreciated.

And finally, thank you to Shakira (who can now contact me at my British address).

View the original article here

Say Goodbye to Your Filing Tray…Forever

The dreaded filing, piling up on your desk, in your filing tray, on top of the filing cabinet, anywhere except where it is meant to be. Why does such a simple task that requires very little brain power cause such distress in most people? Filing is one of the top jobs that most people procrastinate on.

Of late I have been trying to simplify my life, moving gradually towards a more minimalist approach and in the process I decided to work from a smaller desk. I reckoned that if there was less desk space to put things on and less drawers space to put things in, it would help me to minimize. It has helped to a certain degree. It forced me to purge all my drawers and only keep the essentials. What also happened was that I had to move my small filing box to a different location, about ten steps from my desk — no longer within arm’s reach of my chair.

The result — which has rather amazed me: I accumulated a large pile of filing.

If you can’t file a document with ease when you finish with it, it is more likely that you will place it in a filing tray than stand up and file it correctly. Most of us have busy schedules and standing up to file one piece of paper would be considered a bad use of time, therefore we let the filing accumulate until there is enough to justify the trip to the filing cabinet. The problem with that is that the bigger the pile gets, the bigger the job appears and we avoid and avoid because (in reality) there are more important jobs to be done. By having the filing cabinet within reach, you eliminate this potentiality. It’s easy and quicker to file on the spot so you get into better habits.

But in order to be able to file swiftly and efficiently, you must adhere to the second lesson…

This is a part of the puzzle a lot of people resist. Most people will hand-write labels for their hanging files, thinking it is faster and as clear. Sometimes they write with black pen, sometimes with blue, sometimes ALL IN UPPER CASE and sometimes not — and if you are lucky a black marker will be used.

Even if you have a system for writing all your labels with black marker in ALL IN UPPER CASE, your files will still not be as easy to find as those that have been created by a labeler. A labeler has a clear, consistent typeset. You may argue this until you are blue in the face…but the labeler works. It is well worth the minor investment. When folders are clear and with your cabinet close by, you will be able to file as you go (as long as you don’t have too many files or folders).

It is widely recognized that an overfilled filing cabinet is detrimental to your health. If you are trying to squeeze a document into an overloaded folder which is also in an overloaded filing cabinet, it won’t end well.

Set a date and time once every couple of months to purge older documents. Find out local regulations about how long you must keep documents for tax and legal purposes. Minimize the amount of paper you possess and only hold on where absolutely necessary. If your paperwork is weighing you down — you could also try paperless.

It has become quite popular of late to go paperless. You will hear many organizations proudly state that they are a paperless office or a paperless organization. This means that documents are not printed out but rather that documents come in paper format and then are scanned into the computer for filing.

The challenge with a paperless system is to ensure that the electronic documents are filed for easy retrieval. A clear and simple hierarchical filing system should be used, combined with a strong search facility on your computer.

Keep your categories simple and don’t overcomplicate. David Allen recommends a simple A-Z filing system, which works well if you have a lot of filing.

In my home office I don’t have too many files, so I am happy to file by category. For example, I have a Home file where my insurance documents and facilities documents are filed in separate manilla folders, and a Car file where my car insurance, car taxes and other related documents go. Remember the goal of your system is to have easy and fast retrieval — so see what works best for you.

Stick to these rules and never stress over an overcrowded filing tray again. A no-stress clutter-free desk awaits you.

Do you have any filing tips you’d like to share? Feel free to do so in the comments below.

(Photo credit: 3D Illustration of Information via Shutterstock)

View the original article here

Goodbye Google Reader! (Or the Best RSS Reader Alternatives)

With the recent redesign of the infamous and geek-loved Google Reader comes a bunch of geek-hate. The internet is steaming right now with the change to Google Reader where Google has made the obvious next step in their social movement to say, “do everything now with Google Plus”. They have changed the way that Google Reader allows you to share articles and in the process have ruffled some nerd feathers.

It’s not necessarily the way that Google Reader handles RSS feeds that is the problem, it’s the new UI that has people up-in-arms. So, rather than stay salty and use something that you don’t like to look at to read your content during the day, try these Google Reader alternatives instead.

NetNewsWire, recently acquired by Black Pixel, has been a long standing OS X RSS reader and now can use your feed from Google Reader to sync with the iOS (Universal App). The newest iteration of NetNewsWire for Mac has full Lion support which includes full screen mode.

The interface is clean and if you don’t want to sync with Google Reader you don’t have to; NetNewWire can be a standalone app.

This is my staple RSS reader for my iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Made by Silvio Rizzi, Reeder links to your Google Reader account and provides one of the simplest and approachable interfaces for an RSS reader (or any app for that matter) I’ve ever encountered.

Reeder also allows you to quickly send stories to Instapaper, Twitter, Facebook, Evernote, Email, etc. It’s really great.

FeedDemon is a free Windows based RSS reader that syncs with your Google Reader account. Not only does FeedDemon read RSS feeds, but you can subscribe to podcasts, tag items for later reference, and setup “watches” to find news related to a set of keywords.

The UI is simple, effective, and fast.

BlogLines has been around for a while now and even though it is more of a dashboard type of site, you can definitely follow popular feeds. I like how BlogLines recommends some feeds off the top but also allows you to add a custom RSS feed if you want.

There are also Twitter and Facebook widgets so you can have your social network fix mixed in with your news. The site is mature and is free.

Snarfer is a simple, lightweight Windows reader that’s also free. Snarfer allows users to search their RSS feeds, subscribe easily, and organize their content effectively.

If you want a dead-simple RSS reader for Windows that doesn’t need to be synced with Google Reader, Snarfer is your best bet.

Feedly is one of my favorite web-based readers because it is so visually stunning. I really love good UI design and if you do too, you should definitely take a look at Feedly. Feedly is a free web app that also has Android and iOS apps that sync up with your Feedly account.

Feedly offers a nice way to search different websites and topics and has some great recommendations for starting off with content. This isn’t the most stripped down reader, or one that will give you the most control, but it is beautiful and well-implemented.

Pulse is a little different from the rest of the readers that we looked at so far. It is definitely more of a mobile based application, encouraging you to “start” stories on your devices or using their bookmarklet on the web. After you have selected some content you can view it at your Pulse.me profile on the web.

There is no “RSS reader” function on the web site, more of just an “Instapaper-ish” type of setup. However, on the mobile apps you can subscribe to different and feeds.

If you haven’t heard of Flipboard yet, then you must not listen to Scoble. Which is surprising because it’s hard to get away from that guy. Anyways, Flipboard has been dubbed by many a geek as the best way to look at content from the web. Flipboard allows the user to subscribe to content as well as their social networks and presents it in a “magazine” type of style. Users can flip through pages and tap stories to read through to them.

It’s a great experience using Flipboard and if you have an iPad without this app I highly suggest you give it a try. It totally changes the way that you think about web content presentation.

So, if you are fed-up with Google changing everything that you have gotten use to and the recent change to Google Reader has just put you over the edge, definitely check out these Google Reader alternatives. Is there any other RSS readers you use? If so, you know where to recommend them!

Chris is a developer, writer, tech enthusiast, and husband. He holds a degree in MIS and CMPSC from Penn State Behrend. Chris is also interested in personal productivity and creativity and how to utilize technology to get more things done. Check out his writing about software development, productivity, and technology at devburner.net.

View the original article here