tailor your sales message to fit the sale.

After I read The Secret Language of Influence by Dan Seidman, I passed it along to one of my friends who started a Mary Kay business this year for a second opinion. She’s doing very well selling the products because she is so passionate about the company and their mission, yet she still found ways to improve her on selling skills in Seidman’s resource.

Seidman covers all of this bases focusing on how to handle a customer and also how to handle yourself. In the first part of the book Seidman explains that in order to master the art of selling, you need to develop the skill and ability to influence others and gain understanding of why people do the things they do. Seidman explores the various types of buyers in great detail (there are way more than you’d think, so this aspect is very useful). There are toward buyers and away buyers. There are artist buyers (creative, spontaneous) and accountant buyers (systematic and deliberate). There are big picture buyers and detail buyers. Lots and lots of buyers here people, and they cannot all be sold the same way.  These personalities all require a different approach.

The second part of the book is all about influencing yourself. According to Seidman, you need to learn how to be resilience, how to handle rejection (you cannot be sensitive in sales), and also how to set goals and priorities for yourself. What you need to do to be a successful sales person is all spelled out for you.

can the real jane austen please stand up?

The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things by Paula Byrne is not your average biography. Byrne tells her story by taking an item that Jane Austen owned, used or would have seen and uses it as a springboard to discuss the different aspects of her life and her family. The objects that Byrne describes allow the reader to glimpse Austen's life from a perspective somewhat over her shoulder. The first object Byrne describes is an engraving of Lyme Regis, a West Dorset coastal village, showing us Austen’s love of the sea. Also included is an East Indian shawl that introduces some of Austen's more exotic relatives. And her notebooks containing her youthful writings show how her family nurtured her writing. This strategy causes the biography to jump around a bit, but it’s still a genius idea with impeccable research.

I learned a lot. For example did you know that Jane Austen, contrary to what people might expect, was firmly not of the belief that there is only one person in the world whom you can love? I find this comforting.

This biography is different, informative, and fun to read. Three of my favorite things.

only includes the good stuff.

I am not even remotely tech savvy. Web wise, can’t go much further than this (very basic) blog. Other than my general disinterest, I also don’t have time to figure out how to use different web technologies, I’m busy molding the minds of America’s youth/trying not to hit them. Peter Gasston's The Modern Web, Multi-Device Web Development with HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript is exactly what people like me need. When I say people like me, I mean people who would benefit from building their own website, but don’t have time to research it themselves.  For me it would be useful for this blog, or a classroom website, for you it could be for something else like your own business. Gasston doesn’t give you a bunch of different directions in this resource; he gives you the RIGHT direction. He’s done the research for you; all you have to do is follow his lead, and BAM you’ve updated an outdated website, or created a brand spankin’ new one that suits your needs perfectly. We’ve got a reference that is worth it over here people, don’t miss out!

so you had a bad day.

At the start of Changing Lanes by Kathleen Long, thirty-year-old Abby Halladay has a really bad day, pretty much the worst. First she lost her job as an advice columnist, she recently purchased her first home and finds out today of all days that it has extensive termite damage, AND her fiancé suddenly left the country, and presumably her, a mere two months before their wedding. Abby girl, go back to bed.

Abby is now forced to stay with her parents until the house issues are straightened out, and before the days end she runs into her childhood buddy, Mick, whom she has been estranged for over a decade. Which doesn’t exactly add to her bad day, just makes it more surreal. He’s still handsome, and when Abby tries to get the gossip on his return to the neighborhood, she learns that she’s not the only one with bad luck lately. 

Long takes us from feel bad to feel good pretty quickly as the pages turn, things for Abby start looking up, and this novel turns into the perfect summer read.

since it’s golf season.

I am so glad manfriend doesn’t enjoy golfing. He’s not all that great at it, and the few times he’s gone, he is bored out of his mind until the beers start opening. He’s much too exciting for the likes of golf, he’d much rather watch Young and the Restless.

Golf caddie and author Oliver Horovitz’s memoir titled An American Caddie in St. Andrews: Growing up, Girls, and Looping on the Old Course adds a little UMPH to the game. Horovitz has been a caddie since the age of twelve and he takes us through that first summer and his journey to the top. He’s actually a pretty impressive guy, with a 1.8 handicap (whatever that means), but more importantly he was accepted into Harvard, but took the year off and spent it at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Horovitz was just a New York boy trying to fit in with the caddies at St. Andrews. His storytelling is excellent, making this memoir enjoyable for every reader, even those like me who don’t take it any farther than mini golf, which I’m excellent at by the way.

revisiting fables.

I’ve noticed that my 9^th graders have a difficult time deciphering the theme of literary works. Apparently they have been taught that a theme can be a simple word, like family or responsibility, when in the land of literature, theme is a statement. A central idea or message revealed, something learned. I have taken to going back to fables to help the message finding process along.

I brought Aesop in California by Dough Hansen into the classroom recently, which got a few chuckles. Hansen includes fables such as The Grasshopper and the Ants, The Lion and the Mouse and The City Mouse and the Country Mouse, ones with obvious messages, and ties them into popular locations around California. For example, The Fox and the Grapes takes place in Napa Valley. It’s actually quite clever, and the illustrations are as gorgeous as the Golden State itself. 

For a chance to win a copy of this title, follow this blog and email your name, address and this book title to: jenileerose@yahoo.com!

when life hands you Tourette’s…

Imagine how stressful growing up with Tourette’s syndrome must be. Now go a step further and picture Tourette’s along with Mormonism, and throw in a very large bodied librarian. If you can’t manage to imagine any of this, or you are just plain confused, or both, no worries, Josh Hanagarne paints a very descriptive picture in his memoir, The World’s Strongest Librarian.

Hanagarne, who works at the Salt Lake City Public Library, is six-feet-seven-inches tall and weighs two hundred and sixty pounds. He was raised as a Mormon, has extreme Tourette’s syndrome, and in his spare time trains for strongman competitions. In a very straightforward manner, Hanagarne details the ways in which his condition, coupled with a Mormon upbringing, multiplied the countless embarrassments and miseries of adolescence. Not surprisingly, he also didn’t have much luck with girls. “Two things kept getting in the way … God and Tourette’s.” Those major obstacles, and the fact the people were not exactly kind to Hanagarne, lead to a deep depression that lasted until he made the decision to rebuild his life, and so he did.