Voice mail

I am not available to take your call right now…Please leave a message at the beep…We already know that! I recently read in Jeffrey Gitomer’s 12.5 Principles of Sales Success (highly recommended) that if you have this on your voice mail you are wasting a huge marketing opportunity…I have vowed not to let this opportunity slip away…I am getting great feedback from my new voice mail messages…Try a few for yourself…have a listen to mine for inspiration…I change the message every Sunday night. Sales are up..coincidence?...I think not!

Suggested Reading

Have you read any good books lately? I read a lot. I mostly read sales, business, biographical…non fiction titles. When I come across a really god one I like to pass it along. Our sales team was recently gifted a great little book called Jeffery Gitomer’s Little Red Book of Selling.. If you sell anything…And we all are selling something…this book CAN change your life, your sales, your income and your outlook. Give it a look.

Searching for a mascot

We need a replacement for our booth monkey mascot lost in NYC (see last posting). Applications are being accepted. Send photos of your poseable, bendable, mascot candidates to me at Andis expert@andisco.com. Better photos will include the mascot with an Andis clipper. I will pick a winner. You will be asked to send him to me for an Andis factory tour and training for the show. If we choose him/her for adoption you will get a FREE pass to visit him at the Andis booth at Premiere Orlando the last weekend in August. And FREE Andis gifts at the show. I will post some of the pictures here in the blog photo gallery.

Losing the booth monkey

We lost the booth monkey. He never made the trip home from IBS NY. I had found him in a geocache along the Des Plaines River trail just behind the Rosemont O’Hare convention center during the Midwest Beauty show. He was (is) a little rubber bendable, poseable monkey. We attached him to the rigging of the Andis booth for the duration of the Chicago show. We had a great show. We adopted him and brought him to New York. We lost him during teardown following the show. We will need a new mascot before it is time for the Premiere show in Orlando.

Buyers and Sellers III

So I went to get my weekly haircut. The waiting chairs were full and one of the barbers was out sick. I told Roy, my barber that I would be back later in the day. As I hit the door he said “I’ve got tools if you want to cut a few”. I declined and made my way to the car. As I got into the car my wife said “Why don’t you cut a few?”. “You’re kidding?” I said. She would read her book in a waiting chair while I did a few cuts. I walked back in and asked Roy “Which chair?”. Roy pointed to the last chair and said “Have at it”

I had a ball. I cleared the entire waiting room in about 30 minutes. I have not had that much fun cutting hair in a long time. One guy tipped me $5! Wow! A $5 tip. I forgot how cool it is for people to tell you how great you are and hand you money! I love cutting hair! This was the highlight of my month!

Back to school

My kids have been out of school just a week or so. Today is the first day of summer. I am shooting a back-to-school technical for a magazine today. Go figure. Happy Halloween and Thanksgiving too (it is on Thursday this year).

Buyers and Sellers II

I get my haircut every Thursday. Yes I have a bit of an obsession. I used to make fun of my dad. He got his haircut every 2 weeks on Tuesday afternoon at 4:30 P.M. He did this for 40 years. Like father, like son. He never looked like he needed a haircut. He never looked like he had gotten a haircut. It was and remains the ultimate demonstration of barbering as grooming…the regular, ritual, maintenance of a proper image. One day I woke up and I had become my dad…Not a bad thing.