It is the new year. Time to clean up our act. Time to improve our business. Time to be better than last year. And it is also definitely time to change bad habits. And those are definitely habits that you would want to forget, since these will affect your ability to generate sales leads. In fact, this can prevent you from succeeding in your lead generation campaign. One of the biggest triggers your bad habits to surface is your ‘need to sell’. When you hunger for a sale, your thinking gets clouded, and you make mistakes. When you make mistakes, you end up making a mess of your appointment setting plans. Aside from that, there are also other bad habits that appear when hunger for a sale:

1. You talk first – this happens when you enter the room, launch directly into your product or service demonstration, and basically do all the talking. What is so bad about this is that you do it without first considering what your prospects need in the first. That is a very bad move, and that will definitely cost you your B2B leads.

2. You talk too much – this is another major marketing misstep that you have to break. Talking too much gives yourself away too early. Aside from that, it creates annoyance on the part of the prospects. If you really want their business, then you should also give them the chance to speak.

3. You manipulate discussions – remember, people are smarter these days. They can spot a manipulator from a mile away. And that is the last impression you would want to create in their minds. This is especially serious when telemarketing is involved, since only your voice will be heard by the prospects. This explains the negative lead generation reviews given by prospects.

4. You rush to close – now, if there is anything that business prospects hate the most, it is being made to rush by the sellers. Any responsible (and level-headed) lead generation specialist will know that decisions need not be rushed. Give the prospects time (plus a little, just a little, reminder from you) and you will really get more positive results.

These are just a few things that you need to remember when conducting a telemarketing campaign. While these are seriously bad habits, you can always make them right. For one, when you sell, you should do it with a clear mind, if you act all hungry for a sale, nothing good will happen. Second, put yourself in a context of plenty. You may not get that sale today, but you can always go to your pipeline to get new ones. And lastly, be conscious of your actions, never lose your cool. If you get carried away, you will lose your chance to generate good B2B leads.

You should also invest in a good lead generation team. Since they will be representing your company on the phone (which is the most likely task), you need to look for the best. It would be ideal if you can go to an outsourcing call center to help you.

In the highway funding bill currently under consideration, Congress is threatening to steer the Internal Revenue Service back into a familiar cul-de-sac.

The House-passed version of the bill would allow the IRS to use private collection agencies to pursue unpaid income taxes. But this is not an innovation; it is a return to a practice that was tried and previously discarded. Congress authorized the IRS to use private bill collectors back in 2004. Accounts were farmed out to collection agencies beginning in 2006, but the IRS gave up on the practice just three years later. The IRS Taxpayer Advocate later produced an analysis showing that, apart from a short-term jump as collection agencies plucked the low-hanging fruit, using collection agencies did not really generate more revenue compared to internal IRS collections. Then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman said, in stopping the program, “I believe this work is best done by IRS employees.” (1)

The 2006 to 2009 run was itself a second attempt. The first, which ran less than a full year in the mid-1990s, resulted in a net loss of $17 million for the government. The second program lost less, but still lost the government money overall. The Taxpayer Advocate’s analysis concluded that “the IRS was significantly more effective than the [private collection agencies] in collecting tax liabilities in all but the first six months after case receipt, collecting about twice as much as a percent of the dollars available for collection.”

In other words, using private collection agencies is both more costly and less effective than giving the IRS the resources to do the job itself.

So why did House Republican leaders want to revive this bad idea? We can guess. Likely in part they supported the measure because they needed money to pay for the highway bill, and it is convenient to assume $5 billion can be recovered through private debt collectors, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

But House Republicans probably supported this addition to the bill mostly because the GOP is utterly fed up with the partisan abuses of the Obama-era IRS and its stonewalling of congressional investigators looking into those abuses. The idea of boosting the agency’s budget, even for a worthwhile purpose such as collecting money that is undeniably owed to the Treasury, is just too distasteful for them to contemplate.

While their frustration with the political streak running through the Service in its current incarnation is understandable, this so-called solution is hopelessly short-sighted. Bounty hunting is incompatible with fair and efficient public administration. Whether it is states abusing unclaimed property laws, law enforcement leaning on civil asset forfeiture to fund itself, or governments treating traffic cops as revenue collectors, asking fair enforcement from people operating for their own profit is doomed to fail.

The IRS, at least in theory, is not concerned with collecting the maximum amount of tax from citizens. The Service’s job is to determine and collect the correct tax, no more and no less. Bounty hunters – in this instance, the private debt collectors – do not care about being correct. They might paraphrase an old song this way: If squeezing you is wrong, we don’t want to be right.

IRS agents also have tools at their disposal to work with taxpayers, such as negotiable payment plan schedules, as well as enforcement tools such as property liens, bank account levies and wage garnishments. These coercive tools cannot properly be put in the hands of private collectors acting without impartial supervision.

Overly aggressive tactics are not the only thing taxpayers have to worry about if the IRS decides to employ private collections agencies. Every day telephone fraudsters claiming to represent the IRS seek to scam taxpayers, and they often succeed. Some estimates place the figure paid to these scammers at over $23 million. The Service even has a hotline to report instances of this deception. IRS spokespeople have continually reminded taxpayers that the IRS initiates contact with taxpayers exclusively by mail and will never demand immediate payment over the phone.

Debt collection agencies, however, typically rely on the phone as the first method of contact. Now that the House wants to sic government-paid bounty hunters on the American populace, ordinary citizens may be left to figure out which aggressive caller is really out to satisfy a valid tax debt and which is a fraudster.

Good luck with that.

Let’s hope the Senate kills this bad idea when the highway bill goes to conference. It will not pay for much in the way of road repairs, and it is going to create all sorts of potholes of its own.

Source:

1) The Washington Post, “Congress could make the IRS use private bill collectors for your taxes”

We often think of bad behaviour as a great inconvenience, whether it is from our teenager, our family member, our colleague or friend. It causes us great inconvenience because it just means we have to clean up their mess, and right the wrong.

Sometimes these bad behaviours even cause us great embarrassment and we just want them to pay for it. Or sometimes, their bad behaviour just hurts other people with rippling repercussions.

It is “almost natural” for us to feel victimised by other people’s bad behaviour, we feel as if we are at their mercy (yes even our teenagers) because we feel helpless and we are not able to control them.

But what if, their bad behaviour is a call for help?

What if, your adult friends or colleagues have huge insecurity issues, power struggles, a need to be in control, are simply unhappy with themselves because they do not have inner peace, and they lash out and start behaving like rebellious teens? What can we do for these overgrown teens? What is it that they want?

Bear in mind that their mindset and psychology is still like a teen, so it is challenging to speak to them like equal adults because firstly they do not wish to be treated like one. Secondly, they are asking for attention and throwing a temper tantrum.

How would you care for a teen who is asking for help via bad behaviour? They want attention, they want love, they want to be listened to. So this is exactly what you can do for your overgrown teenager friends/colleagues until such time when you realize that they have much deeper issues and a professional therapist is needed.

What you can do:

• Give them time to talk
• Guide the conversation to make sure it is a productive conversation and not one for ranting
• Assure them that you care and that their views are taken into consideration
• Crack them with lots of love and attention (not romantic love, obviously)
• If needed, send them to a professional

How would you know if they have much deeper issues?

Just look at what is going on in their lives. Do they have an addiction/bad habit that is consuming them? Do they have a happy family life? Are they facing tremendous pressure in the workplace to keep up? These are some telltale signs that their bad behaviour actually stems from a self-destructive mode. It goes way deeper.

I’ve witnessed enough of my clients, friends, family, colleagues who under such deep inner pressure just want to destroy themselves from the inside because they cannot take it anymore. And this, of course, impacts all of us around them. And I’ve sent countless people to therapists whom I work with to make sure they get back on track.

As a life coach, I coach people towards various life goals, but sometimes, these bad behaviours get in the way, and we have to make adjustments accordingly. The goal they want may not be what they need.

Not all goals we want in life should be achieved. Not especially if they are at the expense of our inner peace, inner love, inner power and inner wisdom.

Judge not those around you who are behaving badly, they may be choking in their call for help.

You believe you are intelligent, but the truth is that you make many foolish mistakes. Your dreams try to help you understand your mistakes and become more intelligent.

Even if you are an excellent student and you are very intelligent in your work, you surely make many mistakes in your personal life.

You are proud of yourself even if you are not intelligent and even if you are completely ignorant. You believe that you know many things and you are able to understand your reality, regardless of how rudimentary your thoughts could be.

You don’t want to verify that you act like a mentally retarded in many ways, but this is indispensable for the preservation of your mental health. You have to stop making foolish mistakes that have many bad consequences, and learn how to always do what is positive for you and will help you evolve.

Since you have inherited a satanic anti-conscience, which is constantly trying to destroy your conscience, you must stop following the misleading thoughts sent by your anti-conscience to your conscience with the intention to destroy your capacity to think logically, and learn how to develop your conscience.

The big irony that marks your life is exactly the fact that your evil self is your worst enemy. You must offer resistance to the absurd and evil thoughts of your evil self.

Your anti-conscience is a part of yourself. It is not someone else, but the truth is that it is someone else, since it is a demon. It is not a human being. Your anti-conscience is your wild conscience; your primitive self. So, you must offer resistance to your own thoughts, even thought they are not really yours.

This is a complicated matter.

You have many lessons and explanations in your dreams in order to understand how your anti-conscience is influencing your thoughts and your behavior because you don’t understand its interventions. When you are controlled by your anti-conscience you do things that are bad for you, without understanding this fact.

The fact that you have a satanic anti-conscience means that you are constantly induced to be evil, even though you cannot detect this imposition in your thoughts from the beginning.

Whenever you are evil you make many foolish mistakes, and then you face their tragic consequences. So, your anti-conscience can easily destroy your conscience through craziness and despair.

You make foolish mistakes in numerous situations, for numerous reasons. Your anti-conscience always is the background, generating dangerous problems, but you cannot see that it is responsible for your suffering.

Your anti-conscience is an invisible enemy that pretends to be ‘you’ whereas it is a primitive part of yourself that has no human feelings and has no intention to help you in any way. It wants to mislead you, and replace your ego.

Your satanic anti-conscience wants to live in terror. It doesn’t want to be tamed by your conscience and become a human being. So, it misleads your conscience with the intention to destroy it, while it pretends that it is helping you.

You must fight the demon in order to preserve your conscience. This is why God sends you important messages in your dreams, showing you its tricks.

The fact that you receive intelligent and helpful messages in your dreams when you translate their meaning according to the scientific method of dream interpretation means that God is alive.

God works as a private psychotherapist for you. He is always trying to help you save your conscience with the information He sends you in your dreams.

The fact that today you know that a demon is constantly attacking your conscience means that you can finally understand how serious you must be in order to become really human.

All the mistakes you make in life are imposed by your anti-conscience.

The demon pretends to be you, but it is your worst enemy. You must learn how to recognize its characteristics and how to transform your wild conscience into a positive component of your human conscience thanks to God’s guidance in your dreams.

Otherwise, you will fall into one of your anti-conscience’s traps.

God created a beautiful but dangerous planet for you in order to show you your mistakes and your mental health problems into practice, giving you many examples.

You must realize that God created a planet where many animals kill other animals because He had to reflect your absurdity and evilness in your environment. The wild nature is the nature of your satanic anti-conscience.

You have to learn how to become more intelligent and avoid all traps before making tragic mistakes imposed by your satanic anti-conscience, which will make you and many other people suffer.

In order to avoid making mistakes you must be very careful. If you are indifferent and you are distracted by something else, you cannot prevent bad outcomes.

Your dreams help you understand how you must behave.

Getting a car lease can already be a tedious and complicated process as it is, but it gets all the more stressful when people with bad credit apply for one. These days, more and more people have been listed with bad credit, and more often than not, it wasn’t because of their doing. It is because of bad credit that more people are put in the non status group, which means that banks or leasing companies categorize people in two different groups, the first one being those who can afford to pay for loans and leases, and those who are at high risk, called the non-status contract.

Non-Status Contract Explained

Those who fall into the category of non status contact groups are usually those who have been declined by other banks, young people who have little to no credit history, self employed people, those with no credit history, and bad electrical roll history just to name a few. While some cases of not a good credit are really because of neglect and irresponsibility, there are cases where the situation cannot be controlled, especially with the economy. Just because someone has no credit doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to get leases for cars or otherwise.

It’s much harder for people with bad credit to get car leases mainly because a lot of companies believe that they cannot pay the loans on time. Thankfully, there are now companies dedicated to helping people get car leases even with non-status bad credit. Not only is it faster and easier to make a lease, but the stress of guessing and second-guessing if you’ll get a lease or not will be eliminated.

Bad credit lease companies have financers who review each applicant to see if they can afford to get a lease, regardless of bad credit or not. As long as the applicant can prove that they can pay the monthly payment for lease, then their cases will be approved. This also means that self-employed people will have an easier time when it comes to getting leases. It might be quite risky for these companies to take on people with no credit, but it only means that the risk is worth it and that they are dedicated to make life easier, at least when it’s about getting car leases.

Advantages to Taking a Car Lease for Bad Credit

The advantages of getting a leased car the non-status way is that there is no risk on the vehicle once the contract ends. If you don’t like the vehicle, then you can apply a lease for another after the contract, road taxes will also be covered as well as an allowance per certain number of miles.

It’s that easy and you can even find companies who do this online. All one has to do is register and give out their details and a specialist will be contacting you the following weeks, interviewing, asking questions to see if one is able and ready to get a car lease. One does need to pass certain documents but it’s nothing out of the ordinary and will just help evaluate if an applicable candidate or not, once everything is settled, then the car lease is approved.

Unsecured loans for bad credit are specifically designed for individuals with an unfavourable credit history. Bad credit unsecured loans work best for borrowers who have not been able to settle their debts in the past. Such debts could include, for example, credit card bills, a mortgage, overdraft or previous personal loan.

This could have resulted in a negative payment history, which consequently identifies the person as someone who is most likely to pose a risk on the part of the lender. Thus, unsecured bad credit loans come as a relief to people in this category. Fortunately, there are now various lenders that offer these specially designed loans for bad credit.

Anybody can apply for bad credit loans but in order to be eligible, an individual’s age and current employment status will have to be considered before the application is processed. Specifically, a borrower must be 18 years old or above and should have a steady source of income.

Because of the risks involved in granting unsecured loans for people with bad credit, not all lenders offer this type of finance. Furthermore, this type of borrowing generally has a higher APR than that offered by mainstream lenders. There are, however, specialist accredited lenders who have the capacity to lend to individuals who have been declined by high street banks and other lending institutions.A trusted loan broker with a strong network of the most dependable providers will be able to assist these borrowers in obtaining the amount they require. However, the amount that any individual can access will be subject to their capacity to meet the repayments. This will be assessed at the application stage according to their current income and outgoings.

Through such brokers individuals can gain access to a wide range of specialist products including unsecured loans for bad credit with no fees and bad credit loans with an instant decision and no fee. In both cases interest will be charged but no additional fees are levied for administration or set up costs. Accordingly, being turned down several times for finance does not necessarily mean all hope is gone for borrowers with a negative rating. Numerous options are now available to people in this position. Additionally, it is possible to choose the best deals from a choice of those available according to an individual’s specific needs and capacity to pay.

For borrowers who manage to successfully obtain finance, it is best to ensure that all repayments are kept up to date. That way, it is possible to take steps towards improving an adverse rating. This means that, eventually, the borrower will be able to access a wider range of financial products as he manages to regain financial stability.

On the other hand, if for some reason the borrower will not be able to make his monthly payments on time, it is important to let the lender know as soon as possible. This will enable the lender and the borrower to reach a more feasible payment solution, which could prevent the borrower falling into arrears. This in turn could avoid further damage to the borrower’s financial status.

I was a bad boy and a lone wolf well into my forties, and while I was never a threat to Brad Pitt in the handsome department, I always had more women than time to date them. In truth, I was such a screwed-up guy that I admit I still don’t fully understand why my dance card was so full. Any positive character traits associated with my condition were accidental. Bad boys and lone wolves are often the same guy because both are dysfunctional men who share similar characteristics, and both enjoy their anti-social reputations. And, most important, men choose the lone wolf path because they have trust issues with other men. Any lone wolf who denies this is simply in denial.

I think that some of my appeal to women was that I was dangerous. I had no connection with anything or anybody. I was a true free spirit. I went where I wanted to go and did what I wanted to do. I never tolerated anyone telling me what to do, and if they tried, I lashed out in defiance. I was a successful entrepreneur, which meant that I had money to travel and money to spend on my passion, which, fittingly, was motorcycling, a traditional bad boy activity. I always had a couple of fast bikes in my garage, and I rode as if I owned the road. I considered speeding tickets my rights of passage into adult bad boyhood. I laughed at the police as they drove away, and immediately rode like my hair was on fire again. I was an angry, defiant, social misfit.

Outwardly I appeared happy and full of life, and in some ways I was, but I always felt inferior around other men, particularly men who enjoyed friendships with other men. Women loved that I was an independent guy, especially at the beginning of our relationships, but in time, my independence worked against them. I was inconsiderate, selfish, and needed women, but not in ways that necessarily worked for them too. I was totally immersed in being cool and distant. I modeled my cool behavior on Hollywood bad boy, lone wolves. When I did stop to think about the women who liked me, I couldn’t help but notice that many of them were loners too.

Our relationship social life was predictable, particularly considering we were pariahs who eschewed societal norms. That meant we spent far too much time together and rarely with other couples. We always realized quickly that while sex and some of the time we spent together was terrific, we were a dysfunctional couple by anyone’s definition. I shied away from women who had lots of friends, but in retrospect, I think that was mostly because I didn’t feel comfortable with people who seemed socially normal.

Since becoming a lone wolf has everything to do with a lack of trust for other men, it wasn’t hard for me to trace the roots of my behavior. My boyhood with my father had been abysmal. He was an angry, violent guy who seemed to always be fighting with someone in the community. He had failed to provide for his family and I think it was our constant lack of money that drove him over the edge towards anger and violence. I was just a convenient target. I never trusted him, and he never ceased giving me reasons why I shouldn’t. I avoided him and while I tried not to afford him opportunities to betray me, he was older and smarter, and often succeeded in spite of my efforts.

I grew into a man who didn’t trust other men, so becoming a lone wolf was just a natural progression. I had been a juvenile delinquent as a result of my turbulent home life, so carrying that bad boy attitude into manhood was easy. By twenty-five, I was already the quintessential bad boy, lone wolf, and since I had more dates than I could handle, I thought it was all working really well for me. Part of my self-assuredness was because I never talked with other men, and therefore never received any feedback about my behavior.

By forty, it wasn’t working any longer. I felt empty inside and my isolation had become suffocating. Lone wolves live in an emotional vacuum, and my bubble had just enough oxygen to allow me to survive, but not enough to flourish. I had let my lack of trust and fear of men to dictate the quality of my life far too long. While I didn’t trust men enough to venture into the friendship arena, I doubted other men viewed me as particularly good, friend material. I was desperate to join the pack, and I was weary from constantly burnishing my bad boy credentials, which by forty felt forced since I was an entrepreneur who made money legally.

I desperately wanted to find a woman who wasn’t interested in me for all the wrong reasons, but that proved far more elusive than I imagined. I was going to have to change first. I’ll explain that metamorphosis in my next article.

I appreciate hearing from readers.

Your boyfriend’s bad breath may be a real problem for you but trust me that you are not alone in thinking this.

Many of us have experienced our boyfriend’s (and girlfriend’s) bad breath but this subject is made more difficult because our other half often do not understand they they have bad breath.

There are many ways to address this problem.

One way to stop your boyfriend’s bad breath is to practice excellent dental and mouth hygiene yourself. In addition to a spare toothbrush, leave a bottle of mouthwash over at his place and some floss. Tell him that he can use it if he wants.

When he sees the efforts that you make to please him, he’ll want to do the same for you.

Our habits often rub off on each other so another thing to try is to drink more water and less caffeinated drinks and alcohol when around him. This will encourage him to do likewise and stave off the threat of boyfriend’s bad breath.

This sort of hygiene is probably enough to stave off your boyfriend’s bad breath in the vast majority of cases. No longer will you have to hold your breath when you go to kiss him or engage in pillow talk.

If you are very unlucky that the above has not worked or that he has not tried to do anything about his bad breath, you may be forced to try the last resort and be honest and break it to him that his breath smells.

The best way to reveal the reality of your boyfriend’s bad breath is to let him know when he might otherwise expect it anyway. So, in the morning whilst still in bed, tell him nicely that his breath smells. Don’t say that his breath “stinks”. He could take it the wrong way and react badly.

You’ll find that most men will react well to this sort of tactic. If you still detect your boyfriend’s bad breath despite his best efforts to cure it, then hr may have rotting food lodged in the tonsils. In this case, he should go see his doctor for appropriate treatment.