Chelsea and Karah Dance 2006

Chelsea and Karah practicing their dance for their win at 4-H county in the Choreographed routine category. These girls did a fabulous job at District. They did not win due to the judges have an established relationship with another contestant that was kept secret until after the judging took place. Shame on them! I have every confidence Chelsea and Karah will be back with a vengeance next year! Go get 'em girls.


blessings,

Wendy Merritt
imagine-believe-achieve.com

"May you be blessed by the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth." Psalm 115:15

Phone: 972-875-2642
YahooIM: wendymerritt8

http://www.facebook.com/people/Wendy_...
http://www.imagine-believe-achieve.com
http://www.myspace.com/startgettingre...
http://www.purrrform.com/2500
http://www.startgettingresults.com
http://www.youtube.com/WendyMerritt

Amanda and Matt, He Still Loves Me 2006

Beyonce Knowles - He Still Loves Me
by Amanda Merritt & Matt Harrison

My daughter Amanda and her best friend Matt enjoy singing with their hands. Sign Language is a blessing from God that her Grandmommy, Betty Merritt, passed down to Amanda. This song is from the movie Fighting Temptations. Amanda and Matt won the Texas State 4-H Choreographed Routine with this song. They brought down the house! Enjoy.


blessings,

Wendy Merritt
imagine-believe-achieve.com

"May you be blessed by the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth." Psalm 115:15

Phone: 972-875-2642
YahooIM: wendymerritt8

http://www.facebook.com/people/Wendy_...
http://www.imagine-believe-achieve.com
http://www.myspace.com/startgettingre...
http://www.purrrform.com/2500
http://www.startgettingresults.com
http://www.youtube.com/WendyMerritt

Amanda and Matt, He Still Loves Me 2006

Beyonce Knowles - He Still Loves Me
by Amanda Merritt & Matt Harrison

My daughter Amanda and her best friend Matt enjoy singing with their hands. Sign Language is a blessing from God that her Grandmommy, Betty Merritt, passed down to Amanda. This song is from the movie Fighting Temptations. Amanda and Matt won the Texas State 4-H Choreographed Routine with this song. They brought down the house! Enjoy.


blessings,

Wendy Merritt
imagine-believe-achieve.com

"May you be blessed by the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth." Psalm 115:15

Phone: 972-875-2642
YahooIM: wendymerritt8

http://www.facebook.com/people/Wendy_...
http://www.imagine-believe-achieve.com
http://www.myspace.com/startgettingre...
http://www.purrrform.com/2500
http://www.startgettingresults.com
http://www.youtube.com/WendyMerritt

Do Your Potential Customers Forget About You?

Do Your Potential Customers Forget About You?

Your web business probably gets product inquiries from potential customers around the globe. Inquiries come via e-mail and your web site, and you try to send information to each hot prospect as quickly as you can. You know that you can drastically increase the likelihood of making a sale by satisfying each person’s need for information quickly!

But, after you’ve delivered that first bit of information to your prospect, do you send him any further information?

If you are like most Internet marketers, you don’t.

When you don’t follow that initial message with additional information later on, you let a valuable prospect slip from your grasp! This is a potential customer who may have been very interested in your products, but who lost your contact information, or was too busy to make a purchase when your first message reached him.

Often, a prospect will purposely put off making a purchase, to see if you find him important enough to follow up with later. When he doesn’t receive a follow up message from you, he will take his business elsewhere.

Are you losing profits due to inconsistent and ineffective follow up?

Following up with leads is more than just a process - it’s an art. In order to be effective, you need to design a follow up system, and stick to it, EVERY DAY! If you don’t follow up with your prospects consistently, INDIVIDUALLY, and in a timely fashion, then you might as well forget the whole follow up process.

Consistent follow up gets results!

When I first started marketing and following up with prospects, I used a follow up method that I now call the “List Technique.” I had a large database containing the names and e-mail addresses of people who had specifically requested information about my products and services. These prospects had already received my first letter by the time they requested more information, so I used the company’s latest news as a follow up piece.

I would write follow up newsletters every now and then, and send them, in one mass mailing, to everyone who had previously requested information from me. While this probably did help me win a few additional orders, it wasn’t a very good follow up method. Why isn’t the “List Technique” very effective?

• The List Technique isn’t consistent. Proponents of the List Technique tend to only send out follow up messages when their companies have “big news”.
• List Technique messages don’t give the potential customer any additional information about the product or service in question. He can’t make a more informed buying decision after receiving a newsletter! If someone is wondering whether your company sells the best knick-knacks, what does he care that you’ve just moved your headquarters?
• List Technique messages convey a “big list” mentality to your potential customers. When I used to write follow up messages using the List Technique, I was writing news bulletins to everyone I knew! I should have been sending a personal message to each individual who wanted to know more about my products.

What follow up method really works?

Following up with each lead individually, multiple times, but at set intervals, and with pre-written messages, will dramatically increase sales! Others who use this same technique confirm that they have all at least doubled the sales of various products! In order to set this system up, though, you need to do some planning.

First, you’ll need to develop your follow up messages. If you’ve been marketing on the Internet for any length of time, then you should already have a first informative letter. Your second letter marks the beginning of the follow up process, and should go into more detail than the first letter. Fill this letter with details that you didn’t have the space to add to the first letter. Stress the BENEFITS of your products or services!

Your next 2-3 follow up messages should be rather short. Include lists of the benefits and potential uses of your products and services. Write each letter so that your prospects can skim the contents, and still see the full force of your message.

The next couple of follow up messages should create a sense of urgency in your prospect’s mind. Make a special offer, giving him a reason to order NOW instead of waiting any longer. After reading these follow up messages, your prospect should want to order immediately!

Phrase each of your final 1 or 2 follow up messages in the form of a question. Ask your prospect why he hasn’t yet placed an order? Try to get him to actually respond. Ask if the price is to high, the product isn’t the right color or doesn’t have the right features, or if he is looking for something else entirely. (By this time, it’s unlikely that this person will order from you. However, his feedback can help you modify your follow up letters or products, so that other prospects will order from you.)

The timing of your follow up letters is just as important as their content. You don’t want one prospect to receive a follow up the day after he gets your initial informative letter, while another prospect waits weeks for a follow up!

Always send an initial, informative letter as soon as it is requested, and send the first follow up 24 hours afterwards. You want your hot prospects to have information quickly, so that they can make informed buying decisions!

Send the next 2-3 follow up messages between 1 and 3 days apart. Your prospect is still hot, and is probably still shopping around! Tell him about the benefits of your products and services, as opposed to your competitors’. You will make the sale!

Send the final follow up messages later on. You certainly don’t want to annoy your prospect! Make sure that these last letters are at least 4 days apart.

Following up effectively seems complicated, but it doesn’t have to be! So many potential customers are lost because of poor follow up - don’t you want to be one of the few to get it right? Click here to simplify all your follow-ups.

 

blessings,
Wendy  Merritt
imagine-believe-achieve.com

"May you be blessed by the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth."  Psalm 115:15
Phone: 972-875-2642
YahooIM: wendymerritt8
www.facebook.com/people/Wendy_Merritt/734449778
www.imagine-believe-achieve.com
www.myspace.com/startgettingresults.com
www.startgettingresults.com
www.youtube.com/WendyMerritt

Psalm 119:114“You are my refuge and my shield; I have put my hope in your word.” Brought to you by BibleGateway.com. Copyright (C) NIV. All Rights Reserved.

Getting to Know John McCain

This article came to us in an email this morning. This absolutely impressed me with regards to Mr. McCain's character. Perhaps I have misjudged him. Have you?

Getting to Know John McCain

By KARL ROVE
April 30, 2008; Page A17

It came to me while I was having dinner with Doris Day. No, not that Doris Day. The Doris Day who is married to Col. Bud Day, Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, fighter pilot, Vietnam POW and roommate of John McCain at the Hanoi Hilton.

As we ate near the Days' home in Florida recently, I heard things about Sen. McCain that were deeply moving and politically troubling. Moving because they told me things about him the American people need to know. And troubling because it is clear that Mr. McCain is one of the most private individuals to run for president in history.

When it comes to choosing a president, the American people want to know more about a candidate than policy positions. They want to know about character, the values ingrained in his heart. For Mr. McCain, that means they will want to know more about him personally than he has been willing to reveal.

Mr. Day relayed to me one of the stories Americans should hear. It involves what happened to him after escaping from a North Vietnamese prison during the war. When he was recaptured, a Vietnamese captor broke his arm and said, "I told you I would make you a cripple."

The break was designed to shatter Mr. Day's will. He had survived in prison on the hope that one day he would return to the United States and be able to fly again. To kill that hope, the Vietnamese left part of a bone sticking out of his arm, and put him in a misshapen cast. This was done so that the arm would heal at "a goofy angle," as Mr. Day explained. Had it done so, he never would have flown again.

But it didn't heal that way because of John McCain. Risking severe punishment, Messrs. McCain and Day collected pieces of bamboo in the prison courtyard to use as a splint. Mr. McCain put Mr. Day on the floor of their cell and, using his foot, jerked the broken bone into place. Then, using strips from the bandage on his own wounded leg and the bamboo, he put Mr. Day's splint in place.

A READER RESPONDS

Former POW Earnest Brace describes conversations with John McCain through the walls of a Hanoi prison.

Years later, Air Force surgeons examined Mr. Day and complimented the treatment he'd gotten from his captors. Mr. Day corrected them. It was Dr. McCain who deserved the credit. Mr. Day went on to fly again.

Another story I heard over dinner with the Days involved Mr. McCain serving as one of the three chaplains for his fellow prisoners. At one point, after being shuttled among different prisons, Mr. Day had found himself as the most senior officer at the Hanoi Hilton. So he tapped Mr. McCain to help administer religious services to the other prisoners.

Today, Mr. Day, a very active 83, still vividly recalls Mr. McCain's sermons. "He remembered the Episcopal liturgy," Mr. Day says, "and sounded like a bona fide preacher." One of Mr. McCain's first sermons took as its text Luke 20:25 and Matthew 22:21, "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's." Mr. McCain said he and his fellow prisoners shouldn't ask God to free them, but to help them become the best people they could be while serving as POWs. It was Caesar who put them in prison and Caesar who would get them out. Their task was to act with honor.

Another McCain story, somewhat better known, is about the Vietnamese practice of torturing him by tying his head between his ankles with his arms behind him, and then leaving him for hours. The torture so badly busted up his shoulders that to this day Mr. McCain can't raise his arms over his head.

One night, a Vietnamese guard loosened his bonds, returning at the end of his watch to tighten them again so no one would notice. Shortly after, on Christmas Day, the same guard stood beside Mr. McCain in the prison yard and drew a cross in the sand before erasing it. Mr. McCain later said that when he returned to Vietnam for the first time after the war, the only person he really wanted to meet was that guard.

Mr. Day recalls with pride Mr. McCain stubbornly refusing to accept special treatment or curry favor to be released early, even when gravely ill. Mr. McCain knew the Vietnamese wanted the propaganda victory of the son and grandson of Navy admirals accepting special treatment. "He wasn't corruptible then," Mr. Day says, "and he's not corruptible today."

The stories told to me by the Days involve more than wartime valor.

For example, in 1991 Cindy McCain was visiting Mother Teresa's orphanage in Bangladesh when a dying infant was thrust into her hands. The orphanage could not provide the medical care needed to save her life, so Mrs. McCain brought the child home to America with her. She was met at the airport by her husband, who asked what all this was about.

Mrs. McCain replied that the child desperately needed surgery and years of rehabilitation. "I hope she can stay with us," she told her husband. Mr. McCain agreed. Today that child is their teenage daughter Bridget.

I was aware of this story. What I did not know, and what I learned from Doris, is that there was a second infant Mrs. McCain brought back. She ended up being adopted by a young McCain aide and his wife.

"We were called at midnight by Cindy," Wes Gullett remembers, and "five days later we met our new daughter Nicki at the L.A. airport wearing the only clothing Cindy could find on the trip back, a 7-Up T-shirt she bought in the Bangkok airport." Today, Nicki is a high school sophomore. Mr. Gullett told me, "I never saw a hospital bill" for her care.

A few, but not many, of the stories told to me by the Days have been written about, such as in Robert Timberg's 1996 book "A Nightingale's Song." But Mr. McCain rarely refers to them on the campaign trail. There is something admirable in his reticence, but he needs to overcome it.

Private people like Mr. McCain are rare in politics for a reason. Candidates who are uncomfortable sharing their interior lives limit their appeal. But if Mr. McCain is to win the election this fall, he has to open up.

Americans need to know about his vision for the nation's future, especially his policy positions and domestic reforms. They also need to learn about the moments in his life that shaped him. Mr. McCain cannot make this a biography-only campaign – but he can't afford to make it a biography-free campaign either. Unless he opens up more, many voters will never know the experiences of his life that show his character, integrity and essential decency.

These qualities mattered in America's first president and will matter as Americans decide on their 44th president.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

 

blessings,

Bryan & Wendy Merritt

imagine-believe-achieve.com

"May you be blessed by the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth."  Psalm 115:15

Phone: 641-715-3800, 78205#

YahooIM: wendymerritt8

www.facebook.com/people/Wendy_Merritt/734449778

www.imagine-believe-achieve.com

www.myspace.com/startgettingresults.com

www.purrrform.com/2500

www.startgettingresults.com

www.youtube.com/Wendy Merritt

Romans 12:15“Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.” Brought to you by BibleGateway.com. Copyright (C) NIV. All Rights Reserved.