Bloggerrodeo!

My mother just got word that she's been accepted at a senior housing building on the islands, so I am under the gun to find a good moving company to move her belongings across the pond.

Things have been pretty busy lately, so for some reason I wasn't thinking straight in regards to my search for a mover.  Sometimes I can slip back into my old-fashioned ways.  I start to reach for phone books.  I actually call companies whose names begin with AAA.  I go onto Craigslist, and against my better judgment, start searching in the 'Services' section.  

So I PRINT OUT a few ads and bring them with me to Target, so that I can call while having a beverage before doing my shopping.  No one answers so I leave messages. With one of those companies, it was my second attempt at reaching them. It had been a full 24 hours and no one returned my call so I left another very curt message.  The woman on the machine sounded like she was completely strung out on something, her words slurred so bad I could barely understand her.  I try to call a third company but there's no phone number anywhere on the ad, just a "click here" icon.  With every passing minute I am feeling more and more lame. 

So after I return home I am searching the web for more moving companies to call and I come across Yelp!, whose tagline is "Real People, Real Reviews".  I had seen this before but am not in the habit of using it.  Well, I sure will be now!

I looked up the moving company with the strung out lady on the answering machine, the people that I called twice(they had posted some great rates and had a large enough truck for the job).  More than one person who left one-star reviews said that they wished that they could rate them at a '0', it was that bad!  Apparently they were cursed at, yelled at, and ultimately stood up time and time again. 

Thanks to Yelp! I sure dodged a bullet.  I found a very reputable company with great reviews and decent prices.  Once they are finished with the move I will go back and provide my feedback and so that others can utilize that information.   It's nice to know that at least in some instances we can all depend on each other and support those businesses that want and appreciate our business.  Thanks Yelp!

Having sold plenty of items in my life, I am aware that pointing out an item's faults, whether that item is a car, a house, a piece of furniture, etc, is a tried and true negotiating tool used for the purpose of diminishing the value in the eyes of a seller and ultimately bringing the asking price down.

However, there is a fine line between having a courteous and honest discussion about a property's condition and being so obnoxious as to back the seller into a corner to where they feel so "broken" that they must acquiesce against their will.

An example - several years ago when I was living in Phoenix I had my car for sale for $1,000.  A guy from the neighborhood made an appointment to see the car, came over, and proceeded to bad-mouth every single aspect of my car.  I had kept it impeccably maintained, and I knew it was a good car for the price.  Yet this person made me feel so bad, basically saying it was such a crappy car that I would be lucky to get $700 for it.  Then he said he wanted it for $700.  I reluctantly said "Okay"; inside, I was perplexed because he had just finished telling me in not-so-nice terms that my car was a P.O.S. He arranged to come by in the morning with the cash.

Later on that afternoon, as I was sitting on the porch, this other guy is walking down the street and sees my "For Sale" sign on the car.  He stops and talks to me, looks under the hood for a few minutes and says, "This car looks pretty good-no air conditioning for Arizona but I can deal with that, how much do you want for it?" I told him I was asking $1,000 but that I would take $950.  He says, "We've got a deal! I'll go get my money".  He was back within an hour, we did the paperwork and he took off in his new car.

Guess who's not a happy camper the next morning?  The mean guy pounding on my door with $700 asking where his car is.  I looked at him and said, "I'm sorry but someone offered me more.  Besides, with all of the 'problems' my car had, I'm surprised you still wanted it".

Now, I am expecting to get blasted for that story, because I did not keep my word with the first guy.  But to be honest, if the second guy had offered me $700 I would have sold it to him instead because he treated my little car and I with respect. 

There's a right way and a wrong way to negotiate.  I appreciate that the idea is to not exude any emotional attachment to an item. However, if your idea of negotiating is using a belittling tone and going over the top with disparaging comments about the item you are wanting to purchase, the only thing you will accomplish is to tick me off and make me not want to sell it to you.

When I was selling my business a few years ago, the best thing the selling agent said to me was, "I know you want x, but it's just not worth that much".   He said it in an honest, caring tone and he was right.  We came back down to reality, sold the business and never looked back.  If he would've started bashing the very business that we had worked so hard to create, I would've chosen any alternative to selling it to his buyers.  But then that's just me, I'm stubborn that way.

In December, as I was transfering information from my old (paper!) planner to my new one, I noticed something that I hadn't laid eyes on in a year: my list of goals for 2009.  My first thought was, "What's it doing here, in the very back page of my planner?"  Then I thought to myself that it would have been nice to have been able to go back to this periodically throughout the year to see how I was doing and to make sure none of the goals that I wanted to achieve got lost along the way.

So, it's February 2010 and I'm cleaning off my desk, and what do I find under one of my files? My goals for 2010.  The 3 loose pages were a heartbeat away from being crammed into the Bookshelf of Obsolete Files.

I'm revisiting the goals I set last month right now.   So far I'm actually doing a pretty good job of staying on track for the Personal, Financial and Business goals that I set for myself.  However, I do see that one goal has already fallen by the wayside - I am supposed to be studying my Japanese so that I can take the Japanese Proficiency Exam(Level 2) in November.  This is a goal that I had abandoned about 10 years ago, but I have a new desire to accomplish this for myself.

I am going to post these on the bulletin board that's right in front of my face so that they don't get lost again!!