Thursday, June 30, 2011

How’s that Working for You?

I was stuck!

There I was, sitting with the Good Prospect at long last, and suddenly the conversation was flagging.

Worse, it seemed as if I was the one being interviewed, instead of me learning about my prospect’s needs and pain.

I was desperate to steer the conversation back to the prospect’s business, and ultimately, how I might be able to help them.

Suddenly I remembered Melvyn Bragg.

What are good questions to ask?

I listen to BBC podcasts of Melvyn Bragg: In Our Time ; they are jolly, and jolly interesting, but most of all, Melvyn asks questions that keep the conversation rolling.

I have noted some of his questions as the days roll by.

My list will be updated and taped above my phone, so I’ll have a series of prompts while I’m on the phone, to help me keep the conversation going.

Talk to Me !

P.S. Please see also “ Ping-Pong Conversations

P.P.S. Here are some examples of Melvyn’s questions:-

(1) What do we know of ...?

(2) Can you explain what you mean by ...?

(3) You mentioned ___. How did that arise?

(4) Can you explain what the position is ...?

(5) (Statement). Could you explain why that is?

(6) What do you mean by ...?

(7) Can we spend a moment discussing ...?

(8) Why is it so important that ...?

(9) How does this affect ...?

(10) How was that achieved?

(11) Why is that the case?

(12) For most of us that needs a little bit more explanation.

(13) How do you go about doing that?

(14) What did you get out of this?

(15) Who had expected (that)?

(16) Could you give me a bit more detail?

(17) Can you fill me in a little bit more about what they (neutrinos!) do?

(18) Can you bring me up to speed on ___?

(19) Why is it so (dramatic)?

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Sales – Moving Forwards

This morning I head downtown; I’ll be presenting a demonstration of some of my applications.

The first meeting was held in January, and it has taken this long to shake a meeting out of that.

The problem that was mentioned in January, the problem that will peak in December, will still peak in December. We just have four months less in which to solve it.

I am thinking of the Sale; How can I get money out of today’s meeting?

I fear I am not pushy enough, so here is my plan:-

I Will Break the Task Into Two Smaller Tasks

My task today is to MOVE THE CLIENT FORWARD from “A discussion” (last January) through “A demonstration” (today) and get them to agree to accept “A proposal” from me.

If I come out of today’s meeting with a request for proposal, I can take everything I’ve learned about the client and put that into the proposal in a way that makes the client want to accept the proposal.

My proposal needn’t be the complete solution – although it will surely help if I can show a road map to the December goal – as much as it might suggests a pilot project, something that will be of low-cost, but will produce measurable results of benefit to the client.

And along the way put some money in my bank account!

Talk to Me !

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

They'll Be Hurdles, Not Obstacles

There’s a difference between a hurdle and an obstacle.

Hurdles can be leaped over, usually successfully, but if not, the damage to our bodies and self-esteem is rather small, and recovery is fast and cheap.

Obstacles need to be gotten around, or over, or dynamited out of the way.

Obstacles require a change of budget, schedule, priorities.

Hurdles require a cup of coffee, a moment’s reflection, and rolled-up-sleeves.

Talk to Me !

Monday, June 27, 2011

One Page Fits All

A recent issue of my eLetter prompted this response:

I would like to ‘build’ on your objectives fit on one piece of paper. The same goes for lessons learned after a project. Produce a wonderfully formatted 50 page document and nobody will read it and nobody will learn. Produce a one page ‘lessons learned’ document and it will be read and people will learn.

Thanks Bob, and yes the "1-sheet" principle has been around for a long time.

The Ten Commandments, ...

We used 80-column coding form pads when I started.

We penciled in our FORTRAN, COBOL, ASSEMBLER et al. line after line, page after page, pad after pad.

Twenty years later I learned that had I broken the programs down into 1-page subroutines, the programs would have worked a lot sooner with much less "debugging".

I hold to that today - any procedure that won't fit on a screen is most likely to be buggy.

I believe it is all to do with the eyes & brain - when I can encompass the whole thing without needing any physical movement (e.g. scrolling with a mouse of PgUp key) my brain can take in the entire idea and work on it.

From THAT flows one of my Golden Rules if Windows, always to maximize every window!

What About You?

A central thesis is that if you can’t fit your idea onto a single sheet of paper, then you need to break it down into several subsidiary child sheets under a single parent sheet.

Take a look at your business plan, your proposal, your web site.

Talk to Me !

Saturday, June 25, 2011

The tweet which led me to Eric Loftholm's short clear tips got me hooked.

I watched the first three (in the first 3 days after I enrolled for no more than the price of a disposable email address), but prior to subscribing, I had read a couple of his articles.

It all made sense.

And you KNOW that feeling you get when you stumble upon something new that might-just-work.

You want to try using it straight away.

So Do I

Here’s how I see it:

If what I’ve been doing hasn’t been working, then this new tool, once I master it, will be better than anything I’ve been doing to date.

But I won’t master it without practice, so I should start using it straight away.

Even if I am using the tool(s) only half-powered (because I’ve not sat through all the videos), and although I may not CLINCH a sale (by using only the part-method), I’ll be moving myself forward by using existing opportunities as training exercises.

In other words, if I wait until I’m perfect, I’ll never be perfect!

Talk to Me !

Friday, June 24, 2011

Sales – Every Conversation is a Sale

I seem to have got the initial-contact thing down pat. I have no problems in phoning a CEO and getting them to meet me for lunch.

I seem to have gotten the delivery of a product down pat – everything from initial specifications down to signing off on delivery.

It’s the Bit in the Middle that Fails Me – the Sales!

I am told that I’m a great salesman.

As a trainer I know that I’m always selling a new idea, a new way to do something. I’m good at that.

I am moved to a major decision after a fortuitous business tweet from Michelle Romanica ( @Mromanica ) in which she wrote “I'm finding Eric Loftholm's short clear tips on closing sales very helpful 21 mini video clips: easy to follow & implement http://wp.me/Uy8Q

I signed up for the 21 once-per-day video clips (4 minutes or less each, so far), and it got me started on a new way of thinking.

It also triggered my memory of Darla Campbell’s talk at the AIC with the punch line “There’s always a sale”.

I have decided to focus on my sales skills to the extent that from now on:

  • Every telephone conversation results in a sale.
  • Every email conversation results in a sale.
  • Every face-to-face conversation results in a sale.

What is a “Sale”?

Note that in this context a “sale” isn’t necessarily (indeed, rarely will be) a dollar sale. But it will mean that I have moved my correspondents forward, closer to where I would like them to be.

Note 1: While I was writing this my literally-next-door neighbour phoned, did I want a lift to the polling-booth? The polling booth is in the school next door; I could lob a rock into their yard. No, I said, we should walk, so we walked there. And back. I sold her on the idea of walking.

Note 2: While I was writing this a valuable contact phoned, apologizing for not responding sooner. Perhaps she could get a manager to meet me in a few week’s time. “No problem”, I said, “but I’ll be downtown Wednesday if you’d like a demonstration; I already have one scheduled and could fit you in at a time convenient to you”. My contact sounded enthusiastic, so I made another sale.

Note that we are not confirmed for Wednesday, but I did manager to steer her towards a meeting in two days time, rather than one in two weeks time.

It’s a small start, but it is encouraging.

Talk to Me !

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Priceless!

“Thanks for this. These photo logs are priceless.”

I know what he means.

They ARE pretty good, if I say so myself.

But they aren’t priceless.

They Come At a Price

Several prices.

1: The time taken to key in the text and to insert the images.

2: The time to spell-check and proof-read the text and to compile the lot into a web page.

3: The time to upload the web page and each image.

4: The time to resize the images down from 4MB to about 300KB.

5: The time to take snapshot screen images of maps and edit them in MSPaint.

6: Even: The time spent not-paddling while fiddling with the camera

There’s more, but you get the idea.

And I Believe it is True of all Human Endeavour

Especially within the realms of our businesses.

There’s a price paid for meeting David for brunch

(1) The cost of the meal & tips

(2) The cost of David running his car down to my place then to The Montreal Deli

(3) The time I haven’t spent phoning sales contacts.

(4) The time David hasn’t spent phoning sales contacts.

There’s more, but you get the idea.

Every activity has a price.

The Real Question is – What’s the Payback?

Talk to Me !

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

A World of Estimation

I can’t remember when first I became enamored of estimation.

I ran through an exercise downtown yesterday, making an estimate of how much per month a company spends on a specific manual process ($6,250 per month, which makes my solution look cheap!)

At supper with a friend I am asked “What is your favorite meal?”; she was looking for the answer “Lamb”, for I miss lamb.

We don’t eat much lamb in Ontario, because it is not a common meat; in restaurants and diners it is scarce; in supermarkets it is close-to-non-existent; out in the countryside sheep are rarely seen.

Why? It is cold here, but surely no worse than it gets on the Pennines and Moors of England?

I Started Thinking of the Market

Say 2,500,000 people live in Toronto city. Say 2.5 to a family (probably a bit low, but close enough).

Suppose they had Roast Leg of lamb once a week.

That’s 1,000,000 legs of lamb and that makes … 250,000 lambs.

Of course, there’s all the lamb chops etc., so if we just say “A family eats lamb once a week”, we might need of the order of 100,000 sheep to be slaughtered each week.

How many sheep graze on an acre? I have no real idea, but I estimate that on the rich farmland that has not yet been built over, around 10. (I’m thinking of one or two sheep per ¼-acre house lot).

That means we need 10,000 acres per week for sheep to supply Toronto. That seems a bit high.

We Eat Chicken in Ontario

Chicken is cheap (I know: “cheep!”).

On a ¼-acre house lot I estimate one could run a hundred chickens, against the 2.5 sheep.

So running chickens would cost only 1/40th of the land cost of running sheep.

So I’d expect the cost of lamb to be ROUGHLY 40 times the cost of chickens.

After supper we adjourned to a No Frills, budget supermarket. I found stewing lamb at $18/Kg and huge turkeys at 0.99c/lb, so to a first degree of approximation my logic is correct.

Makes Me Feel Good!

Talk to Me !

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Slowly Going Bonkers

Some days I wonder …

Remember that I mailed out five personal invitations to lunch ?

One of them responded by email:

Good Morning! Thanks very much for your luncheon invitation. Our training requirements are well covered at this time, this along with my hectic schedule, means I need to decline your invite. If you'd like to be considered as a vendor with ********, please let me know and I will send you an email with some further details. All the very best with your plans for 2011.

I replied:-

Thanks ********, but no, I wasn't going to sell you training over lunch!

What on earth was I thinking?

I suspect that I had become so focused on getting acceptances from all 5 invitations to lunch with me, that an invitation to deliver training was outside my tunnel vision at the time.

Now here we are, a month or two later, and how do I re-open this conversation?

Talk to Me !

Monday, June 20, 2011

Targeted Marketing

Slipped under my apartment door was this 1-sheet political flyer.

Annoying to me because we have a secure and clean building, no soliciting, no hawkers, no election pamphlets lying on the floor …

Nonetheless it caught my eye.

Visit www.ChrisGreaves.com for this image! TargetedMarketing_Scan10001.JPG

Why?

Because it reads “Reaching out to the Markland Wood community”

Borys is the member for “Etobicoke Central”.

Visit www.ChrisGreaves.com for this image! TargetedMarketing_35022.jpg

Here is Borys’s riding, with the Markland Wood area, in which I live, outlined in Green, as near as I can tell.

Borys’s flyer got my attention because it mentioned the smallest political or geographic area in which one can live short of saying “I live next door to Millwood Junior Public School”.

Has Borys divvied his riding into ten or so emotional areas?

If so good for his marketing and sales team.

After all, if you are going to print off 10,000 flyers, how much extra is it to print them as ten batches of 1,000 each?

Especially if it gets people to read them!

Talk to Me !

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Be Careful What You Ask for …

I’m reading a paperback edition of Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything” and in the chapter titled ‘The Mysterious Biped” I read the story of Ralph von Koenigswald, paleontologist, running a team in Java.

He wants bone fragments, right?

Koenigswald’s discoveries might have been more impressive still but for a tactical error that was realized too late.

He had offered locals 10 cents for every piece of hominid bone they could come up with, then discovered to his horror that they had been enthusiastically smashing large pieces into small ones to maximize their income.”.

Ugly.

But funnily nice.

Talk to Me !

Friday, June 17, 2011

Withholding Payment

If you have ever tried a Free Sample of food in a supermarket, you’ll understand the concept of give-away promotional items.

My Fantastic Freebie is Indexer . A phenomenal front-end for the Interesting Words engine.

Most people download it for free and enjoy it.

A few people ask me questions or find a bug.

I fix the bug and answer the questions, then I ask

  • Would you mind telling me how you found or heard about Indexer?
  • Would you be willing to provide a testimonial?
  • Would you mind telling your friends and colleagues about Indexer?

Most times I hear silence.; “I’ve got what I want; I owe you nothing; goodbye”.

I’ve had an idea that might work:

Provide answers and solutions to all the questions and problems except one, perhaps the most critical one, then say:-

  • While I’m looking into this, would you mind telling me how you found or heard about Indexer?
  • While I’m looking into this, would you be willing to provide a testimonial?
  • While I’m looking into this, would you mind telling your friends and colleagues about Indexer?

Talk to Me !

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Mail Campaigns

I’m sure I’ve said this before, but it is worth repeating.

Postal mail campaigns pay off, at least in my line of business.

My business is “Keeping my name in the front of everyone’s head”. The money follows that.

For the past two weeks I’ve been wading through my stale contacts (“ The 1-sheet 2-page PDF letter ”, “ The Importance of Follow-up ”, “ About My Fountain-Pen ”) with a daily objective of ten stamped envelopes going out the door every business day. In making my way through the contact list to generate 10 envelopes, I make some phone calls too. I’m probably re-making contact with about 15 people today.

My count of “stale” contacts reads chronologically 152, 147. 132, 128, 121, 104, 100, 94, so you can see that my “10 envelopes per day” is eroded as contacts that were NOT stale rise to staledom.

Still, it’s progress, and my goal is to get on top of my contact list.

Over the past two weeks I’ve had two incoming phone calls that have mentioned my hand-written note in fountain-pen ink, and the use of my photo on a postage stamp .

The ink and the stamp (and the slogans on the BACK of the envelope !) are gimmicks to get attention, to make me stand out, if only for a minute.

The phone calls are evidence that postal mailings, with a transient gimmick, do work.

Establishing and maintaining contact is postal and email and phone and coffee and lunch and ...

Business relationships, like romantic relationships, are built up with trust over time.

Talk to Me !

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

The 1-sheet 2-page PDF letter

Please see also “ Rainy-Day Mailings Always Get Me Up

I’ve been whittling down my backlog of contacts by a strict regime.

I look at the contact who is ready for a contact and make a quick decision: Phone or mail? Colleagues are almost always a phone call. Established contacts are a phone call, unless their record indicates I’ve left 2 consecutive voice-mails without a response. They, and everyone else, gets a 1-sheet 2-page printout of a PDF file.

I’m using up some rather fancy cream-colored paper and envelopes I bought three years ago. That’s my capital, sitting idle on a shelf in my stationery cupboard.

And the PDF Files?

Well, I started with one that was suitable for a contact, but for the second contact I had to write up another PDF.

The third contact, too, required a different PDF file.

But now I’m at the fortieth contact and I have established a small pool of about 6 PDF papers and I can usually find one that suits.

If the contact comments indicate “short of time”, then they receive “TimeConstraints.PDF”, and so it goes.

I do this mechanically. I do NOT move on to the next contact until the PDF sheet is printed (on cream paper), the envelope is printed (cream envelope), the sheet folded and stuffed into the envelope, the envelope sealed and stamped.

No one slips through the net.

If your name comes up, I’m touching you.

Talk to Me !

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

The Back of the Envelope

Have you ever watched yourself with an envelope?

I have (watched myself, that is).

I pick up the envelope in my left hand and turn it over to slit it open with my paper-knife.

Visit www.ChrisGreaves.com for this image! BackOfEnvelope_IMG_5058.JPG

It’s what everyone does (once they realize that it’s mail of interest, perhaps because of the postage stamp).

Printing a slogan on the back of an envelope is trivial – you are merely printing a pre-established file – and can be achieved with a shortcut keystroke or with the click of a mouse. If you are more confident than I you can tie the entire operation into the “PrintEnevlopeFaceSide” macro)

Now your client gets another message from you, besides the stamp, besides the contents of the envelope.

Talk to Me !

Monday, June 13, 2011

About My Fountain-Pen

Please see also “ The 1-sheet 2-page PDF letter

Each PDF letter looks like a flyer. No personalized name and address.

But I scrawl across the top “Dear Joe; I thought that this might interest you” or similar, and sign it “Chris”.

In real ink with a real Parker fountain pen I bought 15 years ago as a treat for myself. (Also to make me feel like I was a teenager still at high school).

Today I got a call back from a colleague congratulating me on using a fountain-pen; we chatted for a while.

I pointed out that I felt sure some recipients would lick their finger and smear the writing, thinking it was really a clever ink-jet printing.

What do I learn from this conversation (which didn’t discuss the contents of the flyer)?

That the hand-written short note on a postal-mailed item has an impact, makes an impression, and in some cases prompts a phone call.

Above all it singles me out as a distinct person, maybe an old fuddy-duddy, but someone who treasures solid values.

Talk to Me !

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Picture Postage Stamps

These are a hit, and so help me I can’t find a reference to them in this blog, so here we go.

Canada post allows one to use customized postage stamps.

“Why not?” I asked myself.

Mine is a personal, face-to-face, one-on-one business.

My logo is my brand is my image is me.

Visit www.ChrisGreaves.com for this image! /Business Development/PicturePostage_IMG_5051.JPG

Sheets can be ordered from Picture Postage (the link is buried at the foot of the text as “visit the Picture Postage website.”).

My first batch was 25, but I quickly switched to a 40x sheet.

Visit www.ChrisGreaves.com for this image! /Business Development/PicturePostage_IMG_5052.JPG

Here’s a fuzzy image, but you get the idea.

Cost?

About twice the cost of a regular stamp.

Impact?

About 100 times the impact of a regular stamp

Talk to Me !

Friday, June 10, 2011

Rainy-Day Mailings Always Get Me Up

By the time you read this, the clouds will have passed away, and we might all be washed down the drain.

Visit www.ChrisGreaves.com for this image! RainyDayMailings.png

As I type I am under that large green slug cunningly disguised as an “April Shower”.

Hah!

It’s been a BLAH day, and my mood is not made better by the weather. I am sick of cold, windy, wet, icy weather.

My contact data base says there are 163 stale contacts – people who, in my opinion, are due to be “touched” by me.

I just don’t feel up to phoning, but I make some calls before lunch and strike it lucky, speaking with three people who have been hard-to-get-hold-of this past month.

I left a few voice-mails, but I don’t like doing that unless we are in the midst of a dialogue.

After lunch I just can’t get going, so I decide that one of the reasons I’ve met people, taken them to lunch, left a voice-mail and so on is so that I can feel comfortable sending them an occasional email.

So that’s what I did, to 16 of them.

One by one

Not a mass-mailing, but a copy-paste-AND-EDIT of a basic text, including some part of my comments or notes on our previous conversation, smack dab in the middle of the text.

Here’s what it looked like:

Visit www.ChrisGreaves.com for this image! RainyDayMailings2.png

It feels good

My contact data base says there are 119 stale contacts

I feel better!

Talk to Me !


Thursday, June 9, 2011

How Will You Stand Out?

A recent posting by a major financial firm in Toronto reads in part:-

We're looking for people with

  • A lot of integrity
  • Good team workers who
  • Can build effective relationships,
  • Learn from experience and
  • Bring out the best in others.
  • Plenty of aptitude, but
  • A desire to achieve yet more. Our people are
  • Passionate about client service and
  • Proactive by nature.

There you have it.

The essential description for your Blog home page, Twitter BIO, Flyer, …

Talk to Me !

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Break Down Those Walls of Text

On the same day I read CopyBlogger’s “ 4 Ways to Keep Your Lifeless Blog from Boring Your Readers to Tears ” article I was chatting on the phone with Rick Shea of Optiv8 about his latest newsletter.

Rick asked me about his image.

No, not his image, but the image he had placed in the recent newsletter .

I thought the image was good; it broke up the text, and especially, the chopsticks were the same color as the divider lines in his text.

Hmmm.

That’s why my post today is so short.

I’m scared of being too long-winded!

Talk to Me !

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Are You an Expert?

The topic comes up again and again, usually from someone looking to hire. “I need an expert”.

Define Expert

Most times people fall back on specific skills; in Excel do you know how to DO pivot tables? In Word do you know how to Compare And Merge documents.

Almost all training course are geared to demonstrating specific features of a desktop application (My courses are classed as Task-Oriented-Training)

To my mind, an expert is defined not by what they know, but by the impact they have on people.

Here’s my 4-scale category of someone who aspires to being an Expert in, say, Excel:

Level 1: Has never posted a question on an Excel forum

Level 2: Has posted a question on an Excel forum

Level 3: Has posted an answer on an Excel forum

Level 4: Only posts answers on an Excel forum

Now we can discuss whether a wannabe, who really doesn’t know the answers, but posts them anyway, and is afraid to ask questions in case it blows their own myth, slips under the radar and gets branded an expert without really being one, but these folks are soon detected and drummed out of the regiment.

If I needed an Excel expert, I’d ask them to provide me with a list of what they consider to be their top 5 posts of solutions to problems in any Excel forum.

And I’d check the dates to see they weren’t all posted AFTER I’d asked my question!

The Conclusion

  • Experts are people who impact people.
  • Experts change the way people think.
  • Experts change their world

Talk to Me !

Monday, June 6, 2011

How NOT to do an Online Survey

In Saturday’s Toronto Star, Joe Fiorito held forth again.

Joe Makes Sense

I started (hint!) taking the survey.

The first page of questions was easy.

Then came a variety of different ways to respond to questions. Joe has already torn the wording of the questions to shreds; I won’t try to better his treatment.

1: I found the business of dragging text blocks into rectangular areas non-intuitive.

2: I found that WHERE I dragged the item to affected the priority of my response, it wasn’t sufficient just to drag-and-drop; I had to drag-and-drop-in-place.

3: In some case the rectangular areas expanded to make space; sounds good in practice, but since the headings for a 2-by-2 array were the same font typeface, size and colour as the text I was dragging, it soon became near-impossible to see where I was dragging stuff.

Take the survey and see if, like me, you soon tired of playing a game you just can’t win.

4: Then look for the button that let’s you say “OK, I’ve had enough; let me submit what I’ve done so far and get on with my life”.

Can’t Be Done

This survey was designed/approved by pencil-pushers at City Hall with spare time on their hands.

My best guess is that the surveyors first surveyed the staff at City Hall asking them to write on a blank sheet of paper what sort of questions they thought should be asked.

Then they shuffled all that paper and called it an online survey.

There’s probably a question in there somewhere about what height the mower blades should be set to snip the dandelions and avoid the daisies.

I didn’t get that far.

I quit by closing the browser.

City Hall - Another Waste of Money

Talk to Me !

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Rent-a-Nudge

"Attached please find a couple of spreadsheets. Sent in confidence.

The GST sheet is what I print and give to my accountant, from which he prepares my income tax statements.

The 2011_05 sheet is my monthly expenses sheet.

My case might be unique in that I am in the habit of "balancing my wallet" any day I return from being outside the apartment.

I reconcile the bank balance against my online bank account and quickly account for any discrepancy.

You might think that someone this organized does not need help, but I've told you about the two large envelopes hanging over my head (=2*$2,500) and you raise the point that I should look into interim payments online."

Who Knew?

Today is the 1st of the month. My machine automatically starts a new billing LOG file (which keeps track of my hours), a new expenses sheet (based on the previous month) and so on, but will I get it done before the end of today?

Suppose I had in place some preventative scheme whereby you remind/nag me on the 3rd of each month if you have NOT received a copy of my monthly summary and that costs me.

A Penalty-Based System.

If you receive my monthly sheet on time, you have nothing to do, so I don't get billed, but if you need to email/nudge me, then you've done something and I pay.

Likewise, if you/I have set up a scheme for whittling down my outstanding balance of taxes, we'd set up a schedule for payments and you'd expect to see a PDF receipt or statement of payment at specific dates. If you didn't see it "Ding" or "Ka-ching" as the case may be.

Other clients would have different needs, and each one would need a discussion with you to determine what kind of nudges are required, and how penalty payments are made.

Talk to Me !

Friday, June 3, 2011

Procrastination Costs Me

I’ve done it again – put off doing something for my business so I could indulge in a pass-time when I should have completed my observations BEFORE indulging in a hobby.

Now it is late in the day and I decide to catch up on work and “Get Things Wrapped Up” before supper time.

I load the application, find the programming error and – the source web site is down for regular maintenance.

So I have frittered away a large part of my day, and now will have to cool my heels, checking on the availability of the web site every hour until I can no longer keep my eyes open.

When will I learn?

Talk to Me !

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Postal Strike, and Why it Won’t Affect Me

As I write this, a postal strike looms tomorrow.

The Toronto Star reports:-

“It has set a strike deadline of 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, though it is unclear if there’s a walkout whether it would be a full work stoppage or rotating strikes. In 2003, the union extended its deadline several times to reach a deal.”

My immediate reaction is to panic. I use postal mail to issue cards, flyers, letters and proposals.

My considered opinion is that the postal strike will hardly affect me.

1: Much of my revenue now arrives electronically through Interac, or by a devious route from a web site, via PayPal, and then directly into my bank.

2: My proposals go out hard-copy and signed by me, but they are preceded by a PDF copy sent by email so that the client has advance notice of what’s coming.

3: My mail-out cards and flyers are sometimes dated, sometimes not. A batch that I dropped in a box late yesterday won’t be collected until 2:30 p.m. today; they may sit in storage for a while, but each prospect will eventually receive a “touch”, as planned.

4: My incoming mail occasionally holds a printed cheque, but if I had a large one in the pipeline I’d ask them to hold it, or get a friend to pick it up, or have it couriered.

5: My incoming mail is about 95% junk mail and paper bills, but since I pay bills electronically, it’s a simple matter to make a guess and make a payment, or dial the toll-free number and make payment. The paper work can catch up when it feels like it.

In particular, a postal strike does not prevent me from continuing to work my way through my contact list, phoning people, emailing people or ...

  • ... printing out flyers or PDFs to mail to people.

I just wish that the team that hands plastic bags of flyers on my door would go on strike ...

Talk to Me !

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Adding Myself to Your Mailing List




I have yet to be refused an email invitation to add myself to a mailing list.

Here’s the latest example:-


We have met for lunch, my correspondent and I, and she is suggesting an extra contact (that’s always good news).

To make things better I read her signature block and see an invitation to subscribe to the institution’s Continuing Education mailing list.

Why not?

I might learn something

(1) About Microbiology, Respiratory Therapy or General Knowledge.

(2) About how they prepare course outlines

(3) About other trainers who develop courses

(later)

Here’s the sort of data I receive. This gives me a good idea of the style I should use to announce the units I plan to sell.

Talk to Me!