My Extended Length Pivot Tables Video Recordings Available for Excel 2003, 2007 and Excel 2010

On my WebEx site – http://thecompanyrocks.webex.com – I have posted three, one-hour-plus video recordings to help you to learn how to create and customize Excel Pivot Tables:

Download “Free of Charge” Resources for Each Recording

Click on the hyperlinks above to go to a special landing page for each Excel version. From the landing page, you will find links to download the resources that accompany each version:

  • The Excel Workbook – in each version of Excel (2003, 2007, 2010) that I use during the video recording.
  • The Step-by-Step Instructional Manual that I created for each Excel version of my recordings.
    • Available as an Adobe Acrobat PDF or as a Word Document

Very Attractive Pricing for Recordings

I have decided to price each of these recordings – which you can download to your computer – at US$9.95

  • Imagine what you would have to pay to hire a trainer – per hour –  to teach you these Pivot Table lessons!
  • Imagine how many pages in a book you would have to wade through to read about Pivot Tables!
  • Now, imagine being able to:
    • Watch a video demonstration of the steps to take to create or customize a Pivot Table.
    • Read – and make notes in – a written document that follows the steps that I demonstrate.
    • Practice the techniqes that I demonstrate on the video with the actual Excel worksheets that I use.
    • Skip back and forth to the chapter that you want to watch or review on the video recording.
    • Download the recording for the exact version of Excel that you are using.
    • Get all of this for only US$9.95

What You Will Learn on My Video Recordings

I have taken care to organize each of these topics “by chapter” – with starting points and ending points – on the recordings:

  • Create a Pivot Table in the Excel version that you are using.
    • Spotlight the uniqe features of each version
  • Filter and Sort the Fields in your Pivot Table
  • Change the Data Source & Refresh your Pivot Table
  • Use Multiple Functions and Views to Calculate your Pivot Table
  • Create a Calculated (“virtual”) Field in your Pivot Table
  • Group Fields – e.g. turn daily transactions into a Month, Quarter, Year Pivot Table Report
  • Create and Filter Pivot Charts
Download WebEx Recording

Download WebEx Recording

Download My Recordings at WebEx

  • Go to http://thecompanyrocks.webex.com and on the left side of the screen click on “Attend a Session – Recorded Sessions” to find the recording that you wish to download.
  • Register and enter your payment information – this is a secure shopping site.
  • Download the recording – also download the WebEx Recording Player so that you can play the ARF recording.
    • I recommend that you “Save” your recording on the download page. Play it from your directory of choice after it has downloaded
    • From the ARF Player for the WebEx Recording, you can convert the recording to another video format (MP4, AVI, WMV or SWF)

I welcome your feedback. Send me your questions, comments and suggestions for future recordings.

Use Excel’s Goal Seek to Find Formula Error

A viewer wrote me seeking help with a formula. He was calculating a monthly payment for a loan using Excel’s PMT() Function and he was surprised at the result of the formula. I reviewed his formula and discovered that it was not a “formula problem.” Rather, it was a “results problem!” Watch this short video to see how I solved this problem for my viewer by using Excel’s “Goal Seek” tool. So now, instead of a monthly payment of $10,666.67, the result is $501.38 – a very different result!

You can download this video – for free – here on my website. Just click the button below the video image.

You can also subscribe to my Podcast, “Danny Rocks Tips and Timesavers” at the iTunes Store.

You can “Master Excel in Minutes – Not Months!”

How to Set Goals in Five Steps

Many people create goals – but few of those goals are ever reached. In this video I show you how to write a contact with yourself to reach your goal in five structured steps.

(Note: This is a re-post so that I can feed this video to my free Podcast on iTunes.)

You can view or subscribe to my Podcast at the iTunes store, “Danny Rocks Tips and Timesavers” by clicking on this link.

How to Lead a Meeting People Enjoy Attending

Don’t laugh, you can learn how to lead meetings that people really look forward to attending!

This 7 minute and 19 second video appears in my March, 2010 newsletter, The Catalyst. Please take a moment to join my mailing list if you would like to receive my newsletter each month. You can sign up right here on this page.

Successful meetings follow a process. In this video you will learn the three-step process for successful meetings:

  1. Prepare for the Meeting – Determine the purpose for the meeting and prepare an action agenda and invite the proper participants to the meeting.
  2. Run the meeting skillfully – Run the meeting in support of the action agenda and ensure full participation for each person invited to the meeting.
  3. Follow-up – Assign roles and responsibilities during the meeting. Ensure acceptance of these assignment. You are already preparing for your next meeting – to follow-up on the decisions and information from this meeting.

If you would like to learn the techniques that I used to create the PowerPoint presentation I used in this video, I invite you to visit my online store to get details about my DVD, “The 50 Best Tips for PowerPoint 2007.”

Related Posts

Greetings from Mexico

Greetings from beautiful Mexico!

I am down here training a client for a few days. Right now, I am enjoying a beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean from my hotel room. I’ll be back posting tomorrow.

Hasta la Vista!

What Do Retail Sales People Do?

Consistently, the post on my blog that has been read the most is “Short-Circuit” City Admits Defeat.

I criticized Circuit City for their decision to lay off their most highly compensated sales staff. I was assuming that they paid their staff a combination of salary and commission. So my conclusion was that they were laying off the sales people who earned the most commissions. Rather short-sighted in my opinion.

Last week I was speed-reading through a stack of old magazines and I saw an article praising Circuit City’s new “24/24 Pickup Guarantee.” You order the product on-line and Circuit City promises that you will be able to pick up your order at the local store within 24 minutes. If they do not fulfill their promise, the customer will receive a $24.00 Circuit City Gift Card.

OK. Fine. “Bricks and Clicks” in action. Order it on-line and pick it up in the store. Order it on-line and return it at the store, No hassle. No big deal. No need for salespeople.

I was passing by a Circuit City store over the weekend and so I stopped in for a visit. I wanted to see if the “vibe” in the store had changed. Not much. The store was better merchandised. But one thing remained the same:

All of the sales people were milling around. Either walking aimlessly or chatting with their associates. Not once, in the twenty minutes that I spent in the store, did one sales person approach me. I tried picking up some product (pretending that I was interested in purchasing it.) I tried my best to act like a customer in need of assistance. No luck.

No sale!

I left with this question: “What actually is a front-line” sales person employed to do in a retail store?”

  • Stock the shelves and re-merchandise the product?
  • Greet the customer and answer their questions?
  • Pretend that you are helping a customer on the telephone?
  • Actually, help customers to make a purchase?

For the most part, I never expect any help from the “front-line” staff at a retail chain store. Not just Circuit City. This also applies to Best Buy and Barnes & Noble, etc. When I go to Costco I know what to expect. It is a warehouse / members-only store. It is set up for self-service and this is reflected in the lower prices that they offer.

Why do we need sales people? If a store does employ sales people, what do they tell them to do? What is their goal? How do they train them?

Personally, if I ran a consumer electronics store, I would imitate The Apple Store concept of “The Genius Bar.”The place to go for advice, insight and technical support. Brilliant! Simple! Valuable!

I think that you could have a variation of this in a book store as well. Have a few knowledgeable and personable staff members share the advice and insight about a variety of books with the customers. Go beyond having a selection of “Our Staff Recommends” books. Actually interact with your customers. Make it memorable. Make it an experience! Make sales!

When I do have a positive experience with retail sales people I make a point of writing about it. Here is a short list of positive posts. See if you can find the common element!

What experiences have you had? Please share your stories. Write your comments below.

Training Can be Fun

I made a quick stop at my local Starbucks yesterday morning to see, first hand, if there was any noticeable changes after the training session Tuesday evening. Granted, this was 6:00 AM and the store was just opening up. I did notice a few more smiles and a more energetic approach to greeting the customers. It will be interesting to observe changes over the next few weeks.

In order to get a better assessment I searched the web for news stories on this topic. Not much beyond the basic reporting. However, I did come across this “fully tongue in cheek” article on the www.howto.tunafish.com website. It illustrates creative ways to really irritate your customers – who said that thy come first? (laughing out loud)

Click here – http://howto.thetunafish.com/?p=18 – to go directly to the article. I hope that you laugh as much as I did.

If you don’t have the time to read the complete article, here is an excerpt:

In order to better prepare you for this sort of “customer handling” we here at Starbucks offer these helpful tips:

    Make sure the customer waits in line for a minimum of 5 minutes before receiving service- even if he/she is the only one in the café.
    Anything over 8 minutes before the customer receives service is too long, the smooth jazz music will only relax him/her for so long, and they may leave with our money.
    Be extremely apologetic with large dashes of sarcasm in the voice. Add different flavors of syrup or make the drink decaf if the customer talks back. You don’t deserve this kind of treatment!
    Call out drink name very loudly, even if they are sitting at the table next to the bar. Walk away before they can ask you for a straw/extra syrup/napkins.
    Correct the customer if they call a drink by the wrong name, even if it is only off by one word.  

As the late, great political satirist Art Buchwald used to say, “I don’t have to use my imagination to be funny. I just report what actually happened today in Washington. I don’t have to make it up – people wouldn’t believe me if I did.”

Do you have a funny story about customer service? Share it with our readers.

Starbucks – This is Not About Training

starbucks-closing-stores.jpgI applaud the leadership of Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks. As you may know, Starbucks closed all 7,100 of their stores yesterday for a 3 1/2 hour training session. Here is a short excerpt from Mr. Schultz introductory remarks:

“This is not about training,” he said to his employees, looking somewhat somber. “This is about the love and compassion and commitment that we all need to have for the customer.”

I like to remind myself that “A business without customers is not a business.” Customers define your business. Attracting and retaining customers is the number one job of every employee. Starbucks is selling much more than coffee. It is selling the “Starbucks Experience.”  And recently, customers – as well as the CEO – have found that experience to be lacking.

Mr. Schultz and others had a mission and a vision to elevate coffee from a commodity (10 cents a cup and free refills) to a lifestyle choice. He wanted to recreate the experience he enjoyed on a trip to Italy, sipping espresso in a cafe. He wanted to create a sensual experience for customer when they visited a Starbucks location. He wanted to create a sense of theatre as the barista prepared each special beverage. He wanted the exchange between the barista and the customer to be personal.

This is what Mr. Schultz had to say  (in a recent memo) about the present state of Starbucks:

…one of the results has been stores that no longer have the soul of the past and reflect a chain of stores vs. the warm feeling of a neighborhood store. Some people even call our stores sterile, cookie cutter, no longer reflecting the passion our partners feel about our coffee. In fact, I am not sure people today even know we are roasting coffee. You certainly can’t get the message from being in our stores.

Definitely time to wake up and smell the coffee!

I promised to go out to my local Starbucks first thing this morning in order to observe any immediate changes as a result of yesterday’s training. It’s now time to go … I’ll report on my experience later today.

Let me know what you think on this topic. Share your experience with our readers.

Closing Your Business to Work On Your Business

News Flash! Starbucks is closing all 7,100 of their USA stores today at 5:30P.M local time! Incredible!

Except … They are not permanently closing up shop. That would be drastic!

Rather … They are holding a 3 1/2 hour mandatory, company-wide training session for all 135,000 store employees. That is dramatic!

That takes guts! And Howard Schultz, the founder and CEO has consistently demonstrated his vision and leadership. We know he has guts!

(Click here to read more about this dramatic event.)

I am sure that many business owners are saying, “How much is that going to cost them to close down all stores for 3 1/2 hours?”

The bigger question – one that I am sure they will be addressing during their training session – “How much will it cost Starbucks if we don’t invest the time to restore our enthusiasm, improve our service and revisit our company’s culture?”

Starbucks has two choices :

  1. Allow themselves to sink down and accept that they have become a commodity as they face increased competition.
  2. Rejuvenate themselves through special training. Re-visit what they must do to elevate the “Starbucks Experience.”

Happily, they chose Option #2.

Whatever short-term loss they have in lost revenue will be gained back in long-term profits and improved customer loyalty.

Here’s my resolve – First thing tomorrow, I am visiting my local Starbucks to see first-hand how they have changed as a result of today’s training!

I realize that it will take some time to rebuild the romance of the “Starbucks Experience.” I am eager to watch it evolve!

What do you think about this? Please add your comments below. This is a great topic for discussion!