The Best-Laid Plans ….

Typical!

I get all fired up to establish new contacts; I have grabbed some useful press releases, spent an hour researching, writing a cool telephone script that ought to start me down the path to securing a meeting with an officer of a serious financial house.

I sit up straight, get the recorder handy (I like to review my efforts after a phone call), take a sip of water, clear my throat, note the time, and pick up the phone.

Dial the number.

“Hello, you’ve reached Ziv Korman” (not his real name). “I’ll be out of the office until July 7th ….”

Aaargh!

Talk to Me !

Snail Mail Handicaps

Twice in the past three weeks I have been handicapped by snail-mail.

The post office is not at fault. Canada Post is pretty good at next-day delivery for anything posted within the GTA going to the GTA. I’ve known this for years, because I’ll drop something in the letter-box across the street and get a phone call about it the next day at 10:30 a.m.

1 A well-loved client stopped sending cheques. Turns out it coincided with my switch from hand-delivery to twice-a-month mailed invoices. My contact rarely goes down to the mail-room (and the company doesn’t have a clerk), so the letters just pile up in her pigeon-hole.

2 A well-loved colleague ignored my evaluation form and gift-card. Turns out he usually checks his PO Box twice a week, but has been too busy this past fortnight to do so. His mailing address is a street address, not a PO Box number, so I had assumed it had gone to his home or shared office.

The solution to both these situations is obvious: Whenever I am mailing something to someone I’ve not previously mailed to, I should send an email as soon as I have dropped the letter in the box, so that people like these are made aware that something will be waiting for their attention.

Talk to Me !

SUFE – A Second Use For Everything

This is not the place to push my passion for SUFE, but it does illustrate how a broad base of interests can serve us well.

A call this morning from a colleague Cathy of Cathy’s Crawly Composters . Could I use some Cards?

Turns out she was in DUCA Newmarket and was given a carton of cards. Greeting cards but blank on the inside. Was I interested?

Was I interested!

YES PLEASE.

Are there any cards left at DUCA? Apparently yes.

Please call them and tell them you’ll take the lot.

This is a nice little coup for me.

I’ll get a mountain of cards for free; I can mail them out to “stay in touch”.

If there are too many, I can pass some on to my colleagues who like to stay in touch with their clients.

DUCA wins because their name is on the back. (In small print, I hope).

Cathy wins because she looks good in DUCA’s eyes.

Best of all for me: I am passionate about SUFE. That Cathy thought to call me is my big success of the week.

The message is getting out there.

Talk to Me !

You do Everything!

This comment came after a colleague posted a general question seeking “…a trainer to conduct soft skills seminars - Effective Communication, Organization and Time Management, etc.”

I emailed back a link to one of my training pages http://www.chrisgreaves.com/Train/TrainingBusinessCommunications.htm .

Wow!

I’m not just an Excel Guru!

I’m always struck by people’s reactions when they discover that I canoe , or know Scottish Country Dancing, Vermicomposting, Document Conversion , speed up slow computers or provide leads to new business contacts from press releases .

But why not?

We all have interests outside our published niche or focus.

What’s the difference?

I write mine down and publish them on the web so that they are always available as a reference.

Talk to Me !

Unwanted Attention from LinkedIn

Another invitation to join someone’s group.

I investigate and find that the correspondent has four contacts, that’s all. Also I have no knowledge of the name.

I search my contacts database by first name and last name. Nothing turns up.

Who is this person?

There is a chance that we met briefly at a trade show or a networking meeting, but if so, we have had no contact since then. Not an email, not a phone call. Nothing.

The person is in effect a total stranger to me.

I decline the invitation.

I learn the same day from a colleague of an invitation whose message content read I think “Don’t say you don’t know me”.

CLICK!

I don’t see LinkedIn as a way to make relationships.

I see LinkedIn as a way to be in touch with people with whom I already have a relationship.

LinkedIn isn’t a replacement for meeting people, or for getting to know them. That will always be done in person or by phone or by email; a combination of the three will cement the relationship.

But a random polling for interest?

Never!

Talk to Me !

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Now Keith I’ve met several times, chatted on the phone etc.:

“I didn't realize that you were a member of LinkedIn. I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.“

CLICK! Instant Acceptance.

Phone vs. Email

• Some people are good with phone; some are not so good with phone.
• Some people are good with email; some are not so good with email.

This was made clear to me this afternoon during a phone call with a client.

I’d phoned to get a confirmation of what I was about to investigate (an apparent bug in a program), but before I could get my question out the client assured me that there wasn’t a problem. “OK”, I said, “I’ll not worry about it”.

(Less revenue for me, less cost for the client, more problems down the road).

This got the client’s attention. “Write me an email and I’ll organize a meeting”.

The client’s company believes in meeting as frequently as possible, which is why so little gets done.

Remember, I’d started with what ought to have been a 3-minute confirmation call, after which I would have issued an email for discussion, but my client’s habit of interrupting and jumping to conclusions before the facts are in, side-tracked the question and built a meeting out of thin air.

The same client who does not believe in written goals and written objectives now wants a written statement of a minor problem.

There’s a fine line between phone and email, and with this client I need to take 60 seconds before picking up the phone, 60 seconds before writing an email, and decide which method is less likely to set off unnecessary fireworks.

Talk to Me !

Skype – the Perils of

If like me you use Skype for long-distance calls between friends and close colleagues, you may be interested in this.

Happened yesterday.

I got an email from a friend “Let’s chat”, so I fired up Skype and dialed her. We had not been on the phone for one minute when my land-line rang (see “ Skype - an Expert's View ”).

“That’s my supper-date, can I call you back?” I asked my friend. Sure. 10 p.m. tonight.

So at 10:15 p.m. I loaded Skype, dialed my friend and was greeted by a loud blast of a Perry Mason rerun.

What’s going on?

Linda (not her real name) had left her computer on and Skype running.

When I dialed her through Skype, Skype at her end picked up the phone.

Skype can’t distinguish between Raymond Burr’s voice and Linda’s (Oops!) and from Skype’s point of view we are having a real conversation, although my end consists of screaming “Linda! SKYPE!!” at the top of my voice.

We finally sort that out – I am to call the next day – and I hear Linda walk back to the couch saying "That was Chris in Toronto; He was trying to SKYPE me ...".

At this point I figure that I don’t want to hear what goes on between Linda and he husband on the couch when they are watching a rerun of a Perry Mason show, so I click “END” in Skype and we are done.

Now consider this: Skype can be used as an eaves-dropping tool. If you leave Skype on and loaded, you could have an unwanted listener.

Talk to Me !

To Bill, or Not to Bill

It’s a good deal all round.

I get paid $1,000 a day when I visit the client on-site, regardless, I tell them, of the start-time or end-time. Billing is easy (It’s $1,000), there’s no need for either of us to be distracted by the clock, and hey! Whatever you want me to do, I’m here. Train, coach, write, test. I’m yours for the day.

A wider variety of tasks gives me the opportunity to showcase my varied skills.

Working off-site is a good deal too. I do the off-site work from my home office, charging only 50% of my normal hourly rate. Good for the client, good for me.

Good for me because I can schedule tasks into my time as I please, and good for the client because I don’t run the meter when I’m doing R&D stuff that remains with me. (That effectively cuts my rate to 25% for the client!).

Then comes the day when I am asked to be on-site for ½ a day.

Should I bill for the whole day on the grounds that the other half day is spent traveling?

Should I bill for travel time – 75 minutes each way?

Should I bill the whole day and suggest that the other ½ I deliver training?

I wrestled with this for a week, then realized that over the past 3 months I’ve had 3 whole days ($1,000) on site and three ½ days on site, and about 180 hours of OFF site work.

That’s a pretty good deal, and I’d be silly to start picking nits over the occasional 1 ½ hours traveling.

Not to Bill, that is the decision.

Talk to Me !

Embrace the Most Argumentative Colleague

Of all the people I meet with, he is by far the most argumentative. It doesn’t matter than 95% of the time he is wrong.

Sometimes I think he argues just for the sake of arguing.

(A bit like someone else I know!).

I come up with an idea for business, and he is the first one of the group to comment, and usually with a negative reaction, rather than a positive and supportive comment.

But the more I think about it, the more I see that I should welcome this.

I could surround myself with fawning yes-men who stroke me at every opportunity.

But then how would I ever see through the pink clouds and discern the storm clouds on the horizon?

Better, during the wave-hands-in-the-air preliminary idea phase get a rock-solid barrier and prove that I can surmount it then, rather than wait until I have invested days of work setting the thing up, only to discover I’d not thought of everything.

Yes.

Better to embrace this source of negativity; if nothing else it is an early acceptance-test for my ideas.

And it is free.

Talk to Me !

Another Way of Staying-in-Touch

A major part of my job is sales, marketing etc. On a daily basis this involves making new contacts, and staying in touch with existing contacts.

You may, like me, stare at the phone in horror.

Pulling up the contact list and staring at the “stalest” contact, the one we haven’t spoken with in a long time, is just as bad.

I’ve written about this before in “ The Hard-To-Touch Contact ”, “ Staying in Touch 2 ”, “ Staying in Touch ” and “ The Easy Touch-Me-Again ”. Here comes another dose!

• Check the contact’s web site.

If they have a blog, read the last half-dozen blog items; make a comment.

Your contact will surely be notified of your comment, and probably will moderate it.

You have re-established contact.

You haven’t given anything of value (except a nice stroking!), but you have brought your name before their eyes.

Again.

And isn’t that what you wanted?

P.S. Make a tickle-file to re-visit the blog after 2 days to see if they commented on your comment – here comes a dialogue phone call!

You Pay Cheap, You Pay Twice

An old saying , variously attributed to each European nationality.

Except it is not true, especially in today’s wired business world.

Consider an example:

A business asks a trainee to develop a spreadsheet model; the trainee spends a month on the project, at a salary of $40,000 p.a.

A rule of thumb is to double the salary to get the full cost of employment (rents, support staff, benefits, pensions etc.) So we are talking $6,600 here.

For a workbook.

One small mistake in a formula, not caught due to a lack of formalized testing and the workbook goes out to the field and is used to give quotations to customers.

The quotes are too high (loss of customers) or too low (loss of profit and/or customers) and the business goes through a severe cash-flow crisis, if it survives at all.

That’s not “paying twice”; that’s paying with your (business) life!

Talk to Me !

The Top 3 Reasons

(1) People will always read a numbered list

(2) A list helps focus your mind

(3) Numbering helps you place things in some sort of priority

(4) Adding an extra item shows you give extra value!

Talk to Me !

Mistakes Happen

(Today is this blog's first anniversary)


“Classy all the way around. Mistakes happen. Character is revealed by how you handle them.”

The quote is lifted directly from Bad Call, Great Apology , and you DON’T need to know a thing about baseball to understand that, or this posting.

My clients make mistakes, and I forgive them, always (sometimes grudgingly, but I do forgive them), in part because my clients put food on my table and a roof over my head.

I make mistakes and my clients forgive me, but all too often I don’t forgive myself.

A professional approach to all this might be for me to forgive myself just as quickly as my clients forgive me; by doing that I am aligning myself with my client, instead of opposing them.

Apart from which, it would be nice to be known as someone who picks himself up and carries on working.

Joyfully.

P.S. And after my mid-morning meeting was stood-up, I received this email:

I just realized that I missed our meeting this morning. I must apologize profusely. No excuses, however my day was thrown into disarray due to my son being sick, setting up a doctor's appointment etc. and I just completely gapped on the meeting. I really hope you were able to set up some other meetings and have some productive time in town. Perhaps we can set something up when I'm out your way soon. Again, my apologies.

The Stiff-Arm

Amongst other things, I develop applications that deal with word-processing documents. Amazing applications, I am told.

I call a firm that provides software for legal firms, anticipating a conversation, perhaps leading to a meeting downtown.

In less than ten seconds I am stiff-armed with a “No, Not Interested!”.

I’m puzzled. How can this be? You don’t know what I do.

Figuring that I have nothing to lose, I persist.

“Do you produce software for legal forms? Yes? So do I.” Is my thrust for three questions.

Finally comes the “Send me an email” and I will.

But my mind thinks that there is not much future with an organization that dismisses potential opportunities without even hearing what they are about.

Minimalizing

I downloaded three hours of audio books to the little Zen Stone MP3 player, and headed off across town to the client site. On arrival at the bus stop I realized I’d left the 20g player on my desk.

There I was, no hard-copy book, no magazine, no printed reports to read. Stuck for 75 minutes on the public transit system.

I refuse to read the trashy free papers that decorate the floor and seating of the subway cars.

What to do?

Out with the little notebook, jot a few topics for the blog. Close the notebook and file it in my slim leather folder.

And sit back.

The more I thought about it, the more I wondered why I was carrying the little leather folder. It held a pen, a pencil, some business cards, my notebook, and three memory keys.

I buy lunch at the client cafeteria. At $6.00 it’s a refreshing treat for me.

I don’t really need a notebook; the client site has scrap or blank paper. I really need only one memory key, and that would fit in my pocket.

Next trip I’m leaving the leather folder behind, and traveling with

Pencil (5g)

MP3 player (20g)

I’ve come a long way from the briefcase-stuffed with-the-world.

Scheduling Next Year

The client is bogged down with the mechanics of updates and issuing updates to users in the field.

What should have been a simple set of edits has degenerated into what starts to look like a full-scale project of maintenance and enhancement. Costly to me because I quoted a fixed-price for this little exercise.

What have I learned?

I have made a diary entry for next year.

• Six weeks before the field work starts we will have a meeting, by phone and email at the least, and identify all requests.
• They will be implemented and tested over a 4-week period.
• I will make one on-site visit to implement and train in the new features.

And that will be an end to it!

Scheduling Today

Who knows what I will get done by the end of today.

I know some of the things I would like to get done by the end of today.

All the things floating around my mind, and on my desk, right now, can be classified as either

Directly and immediately beneficial to my business goals or

NOT Directly and immediately beneficial to my business goals

There’s no argument there.

From the group in (a), I can identify tasks which will

(i) have an immediate benefit to my existing clients and

(ii)NOT have an immediate benefit to my existing clients

There’s no argument there.

From the group in (i), I could break the client list down into

(1) Those who have paid in advance and

(2) Those who have NOT paid in advance

And so on, but I don’t have that many clients pending action this morning.

It’s pretty clear that my priorities should be for the (a)(i)(1) set, and after I have cleared up all those tasks, and ONLY after I have cleared up all those tasks should I start on the (a)(i)(2) set.

And so on.

Sadly this leaves “cleaning the bathtub” way down near the bottom of the list. And, you think, ‘making the bed”.

Not so.

Some things, such as making-the-bed and brewing-the-coffee can be seen as tasks designed to wake me up, get my limbs moving, get air in my lungs, and establish my daily ritual or routine.

The 6:00 a.m. bike ride is essential for my physical and mental health, and the time for it has been factored into my schedule.

But within my scheduled hours of business (roughly 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.) triage of business tasks is essential.

The Meeting – Body Language

You can look it up on the web, but the two that stick in my mind relate to arms and legs.

Crossed Arms

Arms folded across the chest indicate a wall of defense. “Don’t come near me”, they say.

When I saw it in Robert, my host I was mightily puzzled.

Why is he feeling defensive? It is his office in his home; he invited me here; he is talking, I am listening.

In the end I guessed that he was defensive because it had begun to dawn on him that he was not doing such a good job of selling his idea, but he didn’t know how to re-assemble his thoughts, so it was “Up with the drawbridge!”.

Crossed Legs

Michael sat to my right.

I sat with my legs crossed, left over right, so my left foot closer to the right of me – where Michael sat when he arrived – than my right foot.

Michael sat down, and after five minutes I saw him re-cross his legs so that his RIGHT leg was crossed over his left, his right foot closer to me than his left.

When two people sit alongside each other, crossing legs so that the opening is toward the other person is a sign of openness, closeness; crossing legs away is a sign of defense.

Naturally enough you are wondering what happens to the middle person when three people site side-by-side.

Check it out next time you sit alongside each other in an area where you have enough space to cross your legs, and they theirs.

Goofing Off

At 1:37 p.m. my phone rang. A colleague was five minutes drive away and was going to visit the European Deli. Would I like to tag along?

Yes I would.

What/where is the European Deli?

I had no idea, but on the spur of the moment I downed tools, put on some decent clothes, and headed out the door.

Two hours later I was back.

Two hours of wasted time, never to be recovered.

You think?

I could beat myself about two hours not-spent-on-the-phone, or two hours not-spent-updating-my-utility or whatever.

Instead I dressed up (a bit), got some fresh air in my lungs, spent 2 hours laughing and chatting, brought home some ground beef at a good price, and then got back to work.

In retrospect, I often feel scared when going to a new place; perhaps my colleague wanted some “hand-holding”, and perhaps that was the purpose of the call.

I’ll never know.

But it felt good.

The Meeting – Close the Sale!

The meeting lasted an hour, and ended when I got up to leave. Not once during that hour was any attempt made to “sign me up” to the causes.

I find that odd.

Three people meet to discuss the venture sponsored by two of them, and for 60 minutes neither of the two makes a single move to see if I am ready to commit to joining them, even in a limited way.

I think that the moral is “Have a contract ready for your ‘client’ to sign, even if it is unwritten”.

Have a sentence that you can bring out after 30 minutes to see if there is any commitment on their part.

If there is not yet a commitment, the 30-minute mark is as good a time as any to find out and take corrective action.

Linkedin – and My Reluctance to Respond

I realized this morning that a great deal of my reluctance to joined LinkedIn members is the imperative subject line that appears in my Inbox:

“Join my network on LinkedIn” it demands, and I usually see just the subject line in my spam filter before I see it again in my mail processor.

So by the time I click on the mail item to open the message, I’ve been TOLD three times “Join!”, and am feeling a tad annoyed at a machine telling me what to do.

Of course if I don’t know the person at all, it’s easy enough (but still costs me time) to tell LinkedIn “I don’t know this user” and hope that they will be led aboard the next rocket to Mars.

If I know the user well, it’s no problem accepting the invitation; we have most likely discussed hooking up on LinkedIn, or perhaps we are already meeting monthly at some event.

The in-betweens are the at-risk.

If I know OF you but haven’t yet got to know you, I’m more likely to think carefully before joining your network.

And that imperative subject line suggesting to me that I’m being forced against my will tips me towards ignoring the email invitation altogether.

Since LinkedIn knows who is sending the invitation, and why, it would make more sense for them to load the first sentence of the message as the subject line.

Instead of

“Join my network on LinkedIn”

I’d see

“Fergus Drennan has indicated you are a colleague at Wild Man of Food …”

and be more inclined to join.

The Meeting – Drinkies

After thirty minutes, Rob asked Michael if he, Michael, wanted something to drink, and as an afterthought, asked me too if I’d like a drink.

Now I’d had a medium coffee across the street, having arrived early, so I declined a drink at this stage; as well I had a second meeting in a Starbucks café in an hour’s time, so I didn’t want to be coffee’d out.

But it struck me that the drinks should be offered before people sit down.

It is a social lubricant, also a courtesy.

Who was it said that any successful date had to have at least two of three components – food, entertainment and sex?

It seems to me that as host, offering your business guest a drink is the first step in establishing rapport.

And no, it doesn’t have to be a cappuccino or a latte.

A (sealed) bottle of water is adequate.

The Meeting – Establish a Time Limit

After thirty minutes, I decided to point out that I had to leave at 11:00.

By 10;30 I had sat through thirty minutes of monologue, and wasn’t sure where the conversation was going to end, if indeed it was ever going to end.

My fault in part; I could have asked in the first two minutes that we establish a goal for the meeting (even if that had been established by email – it wouldn’t hurt to confirm) and that we acknowledge each other’s time, that at least one of us might have to leave earlier than another.

Since I was the visitor and my host was the resident, the anxiety fell on me; how to terminate the discussion, and would I have achieved anything worthwhile at the time I had to leave?

In the end the answer was no; I gained no benefit at all from the meeting, and I doubt whether my host gained anything at all.

Management Measures!