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I quite liked this advice posted in Business Matters Daily Update.  http://bit.ly/14cORR4

The out of office email message seems to be such a simple thing. So simple in fact that most of us give it little thought. Here Chris Meredith, CEO of officebroker.com explains the top ten biggest sins when it comes to writing the out of office message. 

This also applies to voice mail messages, and to managing your MessageBase Telephone Answering Service.

We operate a Wherabouts Service, now included in all our subscription packages, whereby you can let us know what you are doing, whether you are going into a meeting for the rest of the day, going on a business trip or going on holiday.  You tell us what you want us to say to your callers, and that’s just what we will do – AND we automatically re-adjust the script on the date or time you are due to return.

One of footballs most experienced managers is quoted in the press today as saying “We gave away the most terrible goals I've ever seen since I've been managing a football team," after his team’s 3-2 defeat over the Easter weekend.  One of the team’s players, a controversial signing this season, is also quoted:

QPR defender Chris Samba has told fans to "get over" his wages after apologising for his error-strewn display in the damaging loss to Fulham.  He is reported to earn £100,000 per week, and tweeted "Tell me what is a £100k performance?” in response to an outcry from fans looking at relegation from the Premier League.

So what is value for money? 

Is a player earning £100,000 a week rightly expected to put in a first class performance in each match?  The average fan, maybe earning £25,000 a year and paying upwards of £40 to see each match probably feels he should get a decent return on his expenditure.

Hello there,

Summer is coming soon and here at MessageBase we're very excited to grow our team and look ahead to take over this wonderful industry.

We've just advertised a new Social Media, SEO & Sales intern position to start ASAP. If this for you, then apply here.

Watch our new exciting video before applying (just an advise): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc3_G9SGQ8w

Looking forward to your applications,

All the best

Andrew & MessageBase Team

Did you know that "ahoy" was the original way of answering the phone? Did you also know that businesses in the UK lose a huge amount of money when not answering the phone? And do you also hate leaving a message on an answering machine? If so, then don't worry, you're not the only one!

Join our human revolution by putting a voice behind every company.

Be convinced.  www.youtube/messagebase

This week has been Social Media Week, the third event of its kind with 12 "hosting" cities around the world.  Its purpose: reflecting on the global impact of social media and its role as a catalyst in driving cultural, political, economic and social change.

MessageBase recently sponsored a successful seminar, asking the question: do you like social media, but have no clue how to use it to actually grow your organisation?  We are convinced that social media is an important business tool, but like many others need to work on how to use it to our advantage.

TAKING A CHANCE

I really like the BBC Homepage “Fact of the Day”, short and sweet, sometimes a little obscure but nearly always hits the spot.

A great one today:

“Grapefruit have nothing to do with grapes. They don't taste or look like grapes. The word is a mistranslation from the French grappe-fruit meaning 'bunch-fruit' or 'cluster-fruit'. Grapefruit grow in clusters on trees”.

 A grapefruit is a lemon that had a chance and took advantage of it. OSCAR WILDE

Remember the honeybee's ripple effect in collecting honey?

The great scientist Buckminster Fuller (considered to be both a true genius and a somewhat eccentric visionary) believed about the ripple effect of taking action. He explained this with the example of the honeybee. The honeybee's primary objective is to obtain nectar to make honey. While going after the honey, however, it serves a much greater purpose. As it flies from flower to flower, it picks up pollens and ends up cross pollinating more plants than can be counted! It is an unintended ripple effect, but a very important one.

Fuller also explained that we are like speedboats - the sheer force of our forward motion creates ripple effects all around us.

This week, let's remember to move ahead against the odds as we are often not aware of the true effects of our actions.

Fear of Rejection

It’s testing when someone else makes you feel like you’re not good enough. Rejection is such a harsh word. Especially when you’ve been working towards something, built up that courage and completely put yourself out there, just to hear ‘no’. That definitely burns; maybe even feels like a kick in the ribs, making us feel quite vulnerable and low.

But here are some famous rejections that might make you look at things a bit differently.

Remember the last time you slipped up? That time when you kicked yourself and wondered why you were such a failure and why to even bother next time? Yes it was bad but punishing yourself is just not going to get you anywhere. To overcome the impact of what went wrong it’s time to start thinking about the solution.

Accept what happened, it’s done. Rather than continuing to blame yourself and maybe other people, it’s time to look at what really happened. The best question to ask your self is ‘what’s best to do now?’ You need to make more thoughtful choices that are solution focused. It’s not exactly a win-lose game, it’s more of a process where you’ll reach your goals by learning from your mistakes, making changes and looking forward.

Have you ever heard the story of the 4-minute mile?

It goes something like this:

For thousands of years, people held the belief that it was impossible for a human to run the mile in less than 4 minutes. The ancient Greeks even had lions chase the runners, but it was still ‘impossible’. 

But in 1954, Roger Banister, a medical student at Oxford, with the mission to not only win the race but brake the ultimate record, ran the mile in 3:59.4, breaking this imposing belief barrier.

What’s more significant is what this breakthrough did for others.

We all have the occasional peculiar call and at Messagebase, with a wide variety of businesses using our services, this is no exception.

Yes we have had stressed out callers who have missed their train and are running late for meetings or callers panicking because the copier has run out of toner, a normal day. But every now and then we have some particularly interesting calls and I thought I would share some of these with you. 

I have had an amazing weekend and feel totally exhilarated having done some things that I have never done before.   But my experience yesterday was one I never expected, ever.  I spent the day at Wembley Arena with 10,000 other people, singing as one big choir.  It was one of the experiences of my life.

I don’t have much of a singing voice, in fact my family would say I really can’t sing but I have always thought how wonderful it would be to sing in a choir. Then in January this year I discovered Rock Choir. 

One of the sites we follow is Working Naked.com.  There are some good tips for the home and start up worker, just the sort of people we at Messagebase hope to assist in our day to day business.

“Working Naked” refers to the fact that when you start working from home, you’re stripped of all corporate support including an administrative assistant, technical staff and even the office busybody to keep you in the loop. In other words, you’re left “naked”

This is true; anyone who has taken the plunge into starting up a business on their own will recognise that feeling; it’s all down to you and the day can seem long and lonely.  The fridge feels like a good friend, rewarding when you’ve done some cold calling, comforting when you feel you are getting nowhere.

We came across AdInsight a few months ago, whilst searching for a call tracking service that would allow us to track the origin of phone calls, both online and offline. In particular, we were looking for a system that would give us the ability to track which search engine queries resulted in a phone call.It very quickly became clear to us that AdInsight offered this and much more.

In short, AdInsight Clarity is the perfect complement to Google Analytics, allowing us to pinpoint the source of telephone enquiries, identify the key locations from which people are calling and even monitor call quality via the call recording feature. Other neat features include the ability to see average call and wait times, as well as any calls that have may have been missed. Installing AdInsight really couldn’t be simpler, so even if you have very little technical knowledge, setting up the system is a breeze.

Another Monday story. This one is about Sam, the star Cola salesman who was sent to the middle east.

Having rolled out extremely successful marketing campaigns all around the UK, Sam was sent to the middle east.

Unable to speak arabic, Sam smartly decided to produce an advertising campaign based on picture, to be sure he understood it all. Not a stupid idea, is it? 

Here’s a little story worth sharing:

Jim and George worked for rival shoe companies.

They were both sent to Africa to survey the market for shoes. When they reached Africa, they both realized nobody wore shoes. At the end of their day trip, they paged their bosses - Jim said - ‘Wasted Trip. No opportunity. They don’t wear shoes.’ And George said - ‘WONDERFUL trip: they don’t wear shoes YET!! Unlimited market opportunities. We can sell to everybody.’

Our attitudes change our beliefs. And our beliefs, in turn, influence results.

This week, let’s remember the 2 salesmen when we find ourselves feeling pessimistic about a situation..