Categories
Writing and Publishing

Should You Use Dictation to Write?

Writers claim to dramatically increase their writing speed by speaking instead of typing In listening to podcasts and reading blogs, I’ve heard a lot about writers using dictation. This intrigued me. There are two reasons why I wanted to try dictation instead of typing when composing my first drafts. Why Diction? Increased Speed: The most […]

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Business

A Primer on Ads

Don’t Overlook the Basics for Your Marketing Initiatives By Peter Lyle DeHaan As a periodical publisher, I’ve run ads for my customers. As a marketer, I’ve created and run ads for myself in various publications and on websites. And as a buyer, I’ve reacted to ads. These experiences provide me with a 360-degree view, able […]

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Writing and Publishing

Is the Snowflake Method of Writing a Novel Right For You?

A writing methodology that works for everyone who is neither 100 percent outliner nor organic writer I heard several people mention Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method For Designing a Novel. Eventually, I became curious enough to check out his post on the subject. Though the snowflake fractal intrigued me, the 10 Steps he advances left me […]

Categories
Call Center

Artificial Intelligence in the Call Center

3 Responses to Using AI to Serve Customers By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. Predictions about the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) have been with us for decades. But until recently they only showed up in science fiction books and movies—usually with dire results. Such is the basis for good fiction. Yet in recent months, advances […]

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Business

The Optimum Time to Sell

If We Determine When Prospects Aren’t Open to Buy, Our Experience Will Confirm It By Peter Lyle DeHaan Tyler, it seemed, was content to earn his base pay. He showed little incentive to close sales or earn any commission. Because he had one job to do—sell accounts—I expected his close rate would far exceed the […]

Categories
Writing and Publishing

How to Discover What to Blog About

To start your own blog, there are two aspects: the technical aspect and the content aspect, what is, what to blog about. Let’s look at the content part of blogging first: Find Your Blog Focus If you write whatever you feel like writing (as I did when I started), you will never find an audience. […]

Categories
Healthcare Call Centers

Remote Patient Monitoring

Add New Services to Better Serve Your Stakeholders By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD Whether you’re an in-house medical call center provider or a for-profit outsourcer, look for ways to add more services to better serve your stakeholders. This will increase your value to them and help your community. It will also increase the value of […]

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Business

Pricing, Sales, and Discounts

Price Matters, but Not in the Way You Think By Peter Lyle DeHaan A common complaint I’ve heard over the years from my sales teams is that the prices for our products or services is too high. Yet in lowering rates to match the competition, it becomes a race to the bottom. I’ve seen this […]

Categories
Writing and Publishing

9 Keys to Self-Publishing Success

It’s never been easier to publish a book, but that doesn’t mean we should I once read a self-published book, a novella. I read it for several reasons: it was recommended (which turned out to be a bad reason), it would be a quick read, I’d never read a novella, and it was free (I […]

Categories
Business

Sales and Marketing Success

By Peter Lyle DeHaan Marketing drives sales. You can’t hope to have the latter without the former. Over the years I’ve tapped many marketing channels. Some were successful and others not so much. At the call center where we specialized in telephone answering service, I made extensive use of Yellow Pages ads. Remember them? It […]