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About Zingers
Blogs, Zingers, Books
All of my written communications are intended to be read and discussed by more than one person. I write to share my knowledge, experience, beliefs, feelings, emotions, a point of view, a true story, with others. The sharing can be in the form of a Blog, a single subject periodical, article in a multi-subject periodical, or an entire book.
Zingers versus Blogs.
Zimmerman's Zingers are a stand-alone, monthly paid subscription publication, delivered via email. Each Zinger has only one subject. It always contains a true story that is often more complex than it appears to be on the surface. It directly communicates many lessons and usually provokes many additional thoughts as you go about your daily routine. Zingers discuss personal and business challenges that are timeless in their usefulness. If you own a business and or manage people you will find them very useful. The dates and names are all fictitious, but the events actually happened. I know; I was there for most of them.
Blogs are a writer's diary but with the additional objective of sharing thoughts and ideas with others. Sometimes they are nothing more than rants in which the writer lets off steam about things that are annoying, aggravating and generally out of her/his sphere of influence and ability to change.
My blogs are posted (published) at no charge to the reader and their frequency is dictated by the whim of the author. They appeal to a wide array of readers.
So now you know. Zingers deliver monthly insights you can use in daily life managing, running a business. Blogs are not so constrained. Here, as in life, you get what you pay for. You can subscribe to either by clicking on the appropriate button. Subscribing to the blogs will send them to your email address each time a new one is posted. Subscribing to Zingers will do the same thing with the addition of charging your credit card the small subscription fee each month when the latest Zinger appears on your email.
I hope you will subscribe to both because I want to be of service to you and want you to know me better.
Wes
Wesley W. Zimmerman, Chairman
WZA Inc. The Business Enhancement Team
The Zingers are designed for you, in today's world. You want to learn and grow, but don't have much time to read. They are written for easy reading, in five to eight minutes, even if you are a slow reader. A Zinger is a true story with a moral or question at the end. A Zinger talks with you, it never tells you what to do. Since the stories come from everyday life experiences, they are useful to you every day.
There is no advertising and there are no restrictions on forwarding, quoting with normal credits, or printing in any quantity. Use them in sales meetings, management meetings, with your kids, in presentations.
Each month, we will publish an excerpt of the current Zinger on this blog. You may subscribe to the Zingers or purchase back issues individually. The first two monthly issues of your subscription are free.
You may unsubscribe at any time during the 60 day free trial period with no charges. After the 60 day free trial period, your credit card will be charged $5.47 each month, unless you opt to unsubscribe from the service. If you opt out, we will send one email asking why you chose not to continue the subscription so that we can learn to better serve you in the future.
View a sample Zinger article in its entirety here: Sample Zinger Newsletter
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Archives
December 2006
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June 2007
July 2007
August 2007
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November 2007
December 2007
January 2008
February 2008
Articles
Teaser for Zingers 8 # 0208 - A Tree Grows From T...
What Has Made You Successful? - New Blog Post
Integrity Quotes
Famous Quotes - Difference Quotes
He has unusual integrity for a politician
New Blog article: We Get The Respect We Earn
Perception Quotes
Zingers - January 2008 Zinger - "Renewal? Which P...
A Book Sale In My Girl Friend's Kitchen
Latest Blog Article - Kiwanis
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The Perception of a DifferenceThe Power in Buying, Marketing, Selling, Customer Care
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"We value your opinion - - our way." Customer Satisfaction? On Saturday I took the time to fill in the blanks on a Service Satisfaction Questionnaire. It was emailed to me for the purpose of learning if I was satisfied with the service their representative had provided. I usually respond to these requests for two reasons; o I want the provider to know what was done correctly and what was not. Either way, the answers will help an honest business to succeed. o I want to know if the company or at least its Marketing Department is honest. The way the questionnaire is constructed, the questions asked and the sequence in which they are asked reveals this. In this case the lack of honesty was very evident; the questions were set up to force me to say I was satisfied. The first three questions were "motherhood and apple pie," clicking on an answer indicating dissatisfaction was impossible unless I am a real schnook. The questions following were less obvious about hidden intent. They trapped me by not having any "somewhat" answers. I had to either be totally satisfied or dissatisfied. Clicking on dissatisfied made it necessary to back track and change my answers on the first three questions. I did not like this but I finished the questions expecting to find a box at the end in which I could clarify things with type written answers. There wasn't any such box. I had to choose between the carefully written answers to each questions. If I left one question unanswered I could not "submit" the finished questionnaire. I clicked on all of them and then clicked on ‘Submit'. Being stubborn, I searched and found the company's Web site. Sure enough there was a button to click labeled, "contact us." I clicked it filled out all the asterisk required items, then wrote my feelings clearly in the "comment box" and clicked on ‘Submit". . . It would not submit because "you must fill in the required blanks marked with an asterisk." I checked and I had, I tried again, same answer, tried again, same result. I then filled in every blank on the form with data that would be acceptable, same result. Three tries with the same result. Needless to say the effort left me very frustrated. My conclusion: Either the IT department, the programmer creating the form, the Marketing Department, the Company is dishonest, or the CEO is so insecure no one has the guts to tell him the truth. I sent the draft of this blog to a friend to get his comments. This is what he sent back. I just finished a customer survey recently. It had exactly the same limitations. I believe that you infer much more devious plans than most of these represent. They are generally put together by people who have never thought of looking at service from the point of view of the consumer. They are hopeful that, at best they will provide justification for "business as usual" and at worst will point out areas that can be remedied within the current budget. As you note, there is no room for customer suggestions; they don't lend themselves to statistical summary. If my friend is correct it means that people in the Marketing Departments of many large companies are just plain dumb. Am I correct in this conclusion? I welcome your comments. Isn't wonderful to find yourself doing business with companies like this? Wes Zimmerman Labels: Customer Satisfaction, marketing, perception
Success Ladder Or Crash Ladder Which Are You Building? You build and climb The Success Ladder one step at a time over many years. Each decision you make builds the next step. How high you climb depends On the quality of the material you use. You may not see the dry rot under The surface when you install it. Too many weak steps and it becomes a Crash Ladder when you get high enough. The people suffering the worst injuries are those who depend most on your success, your decisions. How do you see the dry rot? Zingers is a monthly newsletter subscription that includes the first two issues free. You may purchase this month's newsletter individually for $5.47 without subscribing to the monthly newsletter subscription. Labels: success, zingers
 I am a Business Coach, Sales Counselor, author and speaker so I found a good deal of interesting material. The site is one that I will return to when I need a quick source to find the solution to a need. It is not a site I will return to frequently for daily help and ideas. If there is such a section on the site I missed it in my wanderings. It is good looking, easy to read and well organized in the sense of directories that enable you to find something when you have an idea of what you need to know. To my mind, this site says too much, so much that I found myself speed reading and looking for meat, which does not sell me, anything. The testimonials section is a good example; I had the sense that it was meant to convince me through the sheer number of separate letters presented; my mind said, enough is enough. I think this is a fairly common mistake in web sites. The ideal site says just enough to form the perception the writer wanted to create in my mind. Testimonials, for instance, could be separated in groups by industry or audience type. Then if I am a Police Chief I can go to the law enforcement section and see what those audiences liked. That will be much more effective in selling me. Having said this I want to go and take another look at my web site and blog page which can be found at http://www.perceptionofdifference.com/zingers/Wesley W. Zimmerman EDITOR'S NOTE: Average visits to the Motivational Magic Site are currently averaging 19 per day. The web site design and marketing could probably be improved substantially. A comprehensive Internet Marketing campaign would go a long way towards improving sales and profits for Richard Saldan and the Motivational Magic Website. As an example, with effective marketing, pages containing Motivational Quotes can get hundreds or thousands of visitors per day. Obtaining results like that can take several years of concerted effort but incremental improvements can be made at any time and the results of any amount of effort can easily exceed the necessary investment. Technorati Tags: testimonials sales success marketing sales Motivational quotes quotes quotations Motivation success perception perceptions Motivational Magic Motivational Magic blogs weblogs Internet Internet MarketingLabels: first impressions, perception, sales, success, testimonials
A Discount = Lost Credibility = Lost Sale  About once a month I succumb to a promotion and register to listen to a free telephone seminar that will "Double your income in twelve months"; or "Help you to make your book an Amazon best seller," or give you "The Seven Secrets to Sales Success." You name it. I do this because I am always ready to learn something new. Like you, I am subject to times of self-doubt, lower sales than I want, and times when my enthusiasm dwindles. Sometimes I register just to see how the "expert" presents his/her product/service; today was one of those days. A friend forwarded the email pitch with the thought that it sounded like it might be worthwhile. It promised ten secrets to better sales. I read it, learned that it would happen in two hours, last one hour, and only 14 slots were left. I jumped right in. This was the "wild card" buying decision described in my book "The Perception Of A Difference". Was it worth it? Yes, for two reasons. 1. It reconfirmed the value of what I have practiced most of my life, including the absolute value of consistency in sales and business practices and 2. It demonstrated the destructive power of discounting. The ten "secrets" are not new, but they were presented in a different way. They can be found in the Torah, The Old Testament, The New Testament, and "Dad's Sayings" on page 293 of The Perception Of A Difference. There is nothing new in this world, only new approaches to helping you and me learn the eternal truths of human nature. I needed and benefited from hearing them again. For me, the seminar experience was a powerful demonstration of how to lose a sale in a series of small steps.
- It lasted one hour and twenty minutes, not one hour.
- The last twenty minutes were pure sales pitch.
- The featured expert used too many superlatives in describing results, including doubling your business/sales in one year. All businesses are not created equal. What proof could he offer for this estimate?
- He used many references to high placed, oft-quoted, rich people that I will never meet. Even the moderator noticed this and asked if ordinary people could use what he was espousing.
- He talked too much.
He should have asked for the order after thirty minutes, everything he said after that weakened his presentation and proved that he isn't the expert he claims to be. An expert knows when to ask for the order. His normal charge for the eight session phone seminar plus three one-hour, one-on-one phone calls for $1,997.00. Eleven sessions would cost $181,59 each,- not unreasonable if you improve your business by even ten or fifteen percent in a year. If you double your business, as he suggested, it's a flaming bargain. But then he discounted the price of his seminar by fifty percent -- yes, 50%. That blew the sale completely for me. I knew instantly that he wasn't worth his "normal" fee of $1,000.00 per hour. If he were, he wouldn't be putting on this free telephone seminar. If he were he would not be offering his $1,997.00, eight session, regular phone seminar plus three one-hour, one-on-one phone calls for $997.00. If he were, he would not invite us listeners to pay in two easy installments instead of the usually required 100% up front. Had he not eroded his credibility, which lowered the perceived value of his seminar, and had he not offered a discount, he might have landed an order. Dad taught me to never discount, I have followed that policy with great success. What has worked for you? Wes Labels: credibility, discounts, perception, sales, success
Click the Add to Cart button below to purchase the Perception of a Difference Book through Pay Pal at $31.50. Shipping and handling will be added at checkout at the rate of $4.95 for first book and $2.75 for each additional book. ISBN 0-9760307-0-5 - Hard Cover, 305 Pages
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