Saturday, July 30, 2011

Ethics – Part 3/6

Saturday, July 30, 2011
  • You work from home for a client who basically uses you as a contractor to provide products and services for other clients.
  • Your hourly rate is fixed by your client.
  • You quote the hours you estimate it will take for each job; keep track of your own hours; you enter those hours in the client’s web-based accounting system.

The client calls you to apologize: One client, for whom you have done work, receives a 30% discount, but they paid you 100%, and now they’d like to claw back the overpayment over the next 3 pay periods.

That means that for evermore, every hour you work for that client of your client, you’re working at a reduced fee, significantly less than the original agreement.

Question 3: Since any work you do for any of their clients is the same high-quality, do you inflate your at-home hours for that client’s client to compensate for your client’s short-sightedness?

Talk to Me !

Friday, July 29, 2011

Ethics – Part 2/6

Friday, July 29, 2011
  • You work from home for a client who uses you as a contractor to provide products and services for other clients.
  • Your hourly rate is fixed by your client.
  • You quote the hours you estimate it will take for each job; keep track of your own hours; you enter those hours in the client’s web-based accounting system.

The client calls you to apologize:

One client, for whom you have done work, receives a 30% discount, but they forgot to tell you this, paid you 100%, and now they’d like to claw back the overpayment over the next 3 pay periods.

That means that for the next 6 weeks, the first 3 hours work you do for any client you’re doing for free.

Question 2: Do you inflate your at-home hours to compensate for your client’s forgetfulness and short-sightedness?

Talk to Me !

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Ethics – Part 1/6

There are six posts coming up, with at least one question in each post.

Please take the time to answer the questions as you read them. Record your answers. Post #6 contains a summary of all the answers.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

You work from home for a client who uses you as a contractor to provide products and services for other clients.

  • Your hourly rate is fixed by your client.
  • You quote the hours you estimate it will take for each job; keep track of your own hours.
  • You enter those hours in the client’s web-based accounting system.
  • No questions asked.
  • Ever.

The client asks you to travel to their client site, out of your city, 40 Kilometres away, but won’t pay travel costs because it is still in THEIR definition of the metropolitan area.

They WOULD pay to a different site, even though that site is only 20 Kilometres away.

Question 1: Do you inflate your at-home hours to compensate for your client’s travel-expenses short-sightedness?

Talk to Me !

P.S. You might like:-

Ethics of the Gut

Ethics of the Coin Toss

What is Your Biggest Asset?

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

You Must Know SOMETHING!

Grab a copy of the FREE Primo PDF writer .
  • Install it.
  • Start using it.

To stay in touch by email or postal mail, with each of your “stale” contacts, write a 1-page document that describes something you know that is, or could be, of value to a contact.

Of course, starting today you have nothing.

But You Must Know Something

Otherwise you wouldn’t be in business.

Pull up that first contact.

Visualize yourself sitting at lunch with them.

They ask you “Why do you do what you do”.

You give them an example of something you’ve done that got a client excited.

  • So Write that up

One page. A story. With a happy ending.

PDF it and send it off.

Client #2 may need a different story. Write it, PDF it, send it off.

And so on.

Pretty soon you’ll have a nice little stable of PDF articles all ready to go.

Talk to Me !

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

A Simple Guide to Long-Distance Action Scams

Say I work in Canada and you live in New Zealand. Your computer has “stopped working” – whatever that means – and you contact me.

My solution is “Send me some money and I’ll fix your computer”. You send me some money and here’s my solution:

1: Collect the first seven books or magazines you come across wherever you are right now.

2: Power off and UNPLUG your computer power source

3: Arrange the seven books by number of pages, shortest publication on the top of the pile.

4: Select the 3rd book from the top.

5: Read the third paragraph down on the 17th page, out loud, for exactly 5 minutes.

6: Close your eyes and count, silently, to one hundred.

7: Plug in the computer and power it up.

Of course, your computer now works and you’re delighted.

Great!

Tell all your friends about my miraculous powers of fixing problems.

  • Can you spot the reason why my method works?
  • Can you spot others who offer similar solutions to alternate problems?

Talk to Me !

Monday, July 25, 2011

More About Goals

I was chatting with a colleague before lunch, about Paid Speaking Engagements.

I suggested that if the goal was to be paid for speaking (to a group, an organization, a company etc.) then one should refuse any engagement that did NOT pay.

Oh, but I’d still do freebies to get my name recognized until such time as I could charge”.

Then your goal is to be an Unpaid Speaker, for now, until such time as you have amassed a set number of engagements, say 24 deliveries, with 10 good testimonials. After which you can confidently charge for your services.

Note the Quantifiers.

The immediate goal therefore is not the goal “Become a Paid Public Speaker” but is the goal “Become a Public Speaker”.

Once the goal of “Become a Public Speaker” is reached we can set a new goal “Become a Paid Public Speaker”.

Well, actually there are some places which, I think, already will pay me”.

OK.

So now the goal is something like “Obtain 26 speaking engagements within the next 12 months, of which at least 8 are paid”.

Note the Quantifiers.

And once that goal is reached (perhaps after only 10 months) set a new goal: “Obtain 26 speaking engagements within the next 12 months, of which at least 18 are paid”.

Closely followed by: “Obtain 26 speaking engagements within the next 12 months, all of which are paid”.

Note that it's OK to move-the-goalposts BEFORE you start playing the game; changing your goals after you've begun is a no-no!


Why the Stress on Quantifiers?

A close friend, definitely overweight, announced her goal of “Shedding 20 lbs over the next month”.

Now 20 lbs of fat, at 3,000 calories per pound, is 60,000 calories.

There are 30 days in a month.

So my friend has to reduce her diet by 2,000 calories EVERY DAY FOR A MONTH to achieve her goal.

Given that her current intake is probably 1,700 per day, she has to quite literally stop eating to achieve her goal.

It’s called a hunger-strike.

And no, augmenting her efforts with exercise won’t help, because after the 3rd day she’ll lack the energy to rise from her bed.

Management Measures .

There are Four Quantifiers !

Talk to Me !

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Why do You do What You do?

A recent CopyBlogger post had this surprising nugget:

6. Don’t waste your summary area with a lot of empty verbiage about your “team-oriented, results-focused goal setting” qualifications. Instead, use the summary as a place to answer a simple question — Why do you do what you do? Think of your summary as the human element of who you are, the back-story to everything you’ve done so far.

Brill!

If ever I wanted to re-build my elevator speech, and that’s immediately after I given my most recent version, here’s where I could start.

Talk to Me !

Friday, July 22, 2011

Incentive To Reply

I’ve just got off the phone with Paul Strachan. He and I share the same problem – maintenance of a contact list, including solicitation of responses.

I see it as a problem, regardless of the channel used, of eliciting (but not soliciting) a response to each telephone call, email or postal mail I issue.

My marketing strategy includes “touching” everyone on my contact list once every two months. Family (my close entrepreneurial colleagues and buddies don’t count, we’re ALWAYS yakking on the phone)

Right now I’m mailing out an essay to everyone on my list; next time it will be an email, then a phone call, and so on.

Phone calls:

are the pits “Sorry I missed your call, please leave a message and I’ll get back to you”. They won’t, unless I give them a reason.

My Postal mailings:

get attention, what with the cute stamp and the thought-provoking 60-second read, but how do I know that they got there?

Emails:

get the Delete key, unless there’s a compelling reason to reply; worse, perhaps, the spam filter button.

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

For each channel, for each such emission, I need to give my contact an incentive to reply; I’d like to say “Let me know if you’d like me to continue trying to keep in touch with you”, but I’m still above begging, for now.

Channel

Postal mail

eMail

Phone

Voice mail


Drop the card in the mail.

Click Reply, then Click Send

What struck you most about the article?

I have a gift card to send, please confirm your postal address.


Use the stamp


Did you like the stamp?


The table is incomplete, but you can see where I’m going. It will cost me a little bit more time and money, but I ought now to get feedback that is currently missing, and in some cases, conversation where there is silence.

Note that these efforts are all aimed at maintenance of my contacts list, not at generating sales.

Drop the card in the mail

I can enclose a stamped, self-addressed postcard (with my own promotional material on it – they’ll read it before posting it). It’s not a great deal of effort to drop a card in the mail. No need to sign it. Each card bears their unique record number from my contact database, so I know where they’re from.

Use the stamp

I can drop one of my personalized stamps in with the letter, a $1.00 value to impress a friend or relative. Since each stamp includes “ChrisGreaves.com” it is also a chance to spread my web site address around.

Click Reply, then Click Send

What could be easier than just two clicks to keep yourself on the list (and confirm your postal address for the gift card offer)?

What struck you most about the article?

If I phone and get through, I want to have a question about the most recent issue, whether it was an article, a gift card, or an eLetter

Did you like the stamp?

If I phone and get through, I want to have a question about the most recent vehicle. If I’d done a mailing with a cute stamp, I can ask about the stamp, another way of asking “Are you impressed?”.

I have a gift card to send, please confirm your postal address.

When, not If, I get a voice-mail, I need a compelling reason for them to call me right back, and sadly, it will cost me money.

It’s a bribe, albeit a small one.

I don’t have to tell them that it’s a $5 Tim Horton’s card, but I can dream that they will be delighted when they get it in the post, especially if I hammer home the message with a typical postal offer (Drop the card in the mail, Use the stamp, ...)

Talk to Me !

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Giving It Away

I am always torn between giving away my knowledge and making people pay for it.

I figure that every business has something they give away for free, from the cheese monger standing in front of his store on Bloor Street with a tray of cheese bits, to me with my Indexer and other tools, to you and to your colleagues.

A recent blog post from Small business Trends “ From Ripe to Ready: Nurturing Leads Increases Sales Conversion ” includes this little gem:-

Give your best content away. Do it all day long. Your customers will love you for it. (Hint: Customers who love you buy lots of your stuff.)

To that end I will augment my offering of free applications with free PDF articles on various topics.

It’s handy, during a conversation, to say “Oh, I have a paper on that, I’ll email a copy to you”.

For one thing I sound good just volunteering that.

For another thing, it allows me to make another contact by email in a couple of days time.

Talk to Me !

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Even Idiots Have Their Uses

I’ve just got off the phone with a good friend and colleague.

My colleague is being pestered (not too strong a word) by an idiot who thinks he is more powerful than he is.

(The idiot is actually a very small and replaceable cog in a very large but undistinguished machine)

He carries a Blackberry to make himself feel that he looks important.

My colleague and I don’t have a cell-phone between us; we don’t need one. We work to schedule, deliver ahead of time, and keep appointments.

The idiot wants to engage in an email dialogue without doing business.

( Business is the exchange of two pieces of paper, one of which must be a cheque )

My colleague wants to hit the “delete” button on the contact database.

I advise against doing that.

Idiots have their uses

They are good for practicing dialogues, since if the dialogue goes sour, you haven’t lost anything anyway.

How’s that Working for You?

Sales – Every Conversation is a Sale

Strike up a Conversation

More Elevator Speeches

And more.

We are bombarded with advice on how to act.

We need an audience on which to practice our new skills.

Preferably an audience that, if offended, won’t really hurt our bottom-line.

It’s what the free-sample idiots are for.

Talk to Me !

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

The Importance of Follow-up

It happened again this morning – I phoned a potential client with whom I’d lunched five months ago. I’d followed up with emails and, on principle, a phone call every two months.

Two months ago I left a voice mail, but hadn’t heard back.

Nonetheless MY business is to stay in touch, so I called today.

And was greeted with apologies, “Thanks Chris you’re SO GOOD at keeping in touch ...” (I should have phoned you etc.).

All of which leads me to believe that I’m doing my job well if my staying-in-touch is making that kind of impact on people.

And further, that I shouldn’t be frightened of phoning, or mailing, or emailing.

Just to stay in touch

In that sense any channel will be good, as long as, in my message, I pass on something of value to my contact.

Talk to Me !

Monday, July 18, 2011

Six Business Resolutions and Tips for Keeping Them

I stole the headline from another Accountemps press release on Canada News Wire.

The article is worth reading in full, so I won’t paste it here (which would violate copyright laws anyway!)

The first tip reads in part:=

1. 'I want a new job.' Schedule time each week to revise your resume, build your LinkedIn profile, research new job opportunities and set up meetings with business contacts, including recruiters who specialize in your field.

I am struck by the over-riding theme throughout the six tips – to set a single objective and set aside time for that objective.

Indeed, it seems to me that my biggest enemy is my schedule – or lack of it.

So today I fired up my Calendar Wizard and printed off a schedule for next month.

I have marked in it, on each day, a specific task geared towards my business.

Each task should take an hour or less, and if I have a task scheduled for 2 p.m. Thursday, I’m going to treat it as a commitment to a client and not take a booking for that time.

Talk to Me !

Saturday, July 16, 2011

The Billable Phone Call

The client has booked a phone call for 3:30 p.m. and I have promised to keep my phone line free at that time. There is some indication of the conversation in the preliminary email; they want to chat about roll-out and best practices.

I know about that stuff, so this should be a conversation of value to the client.

Yet there has been no mention to date of whether I am to be paid for this conversation.

I am flexible in these matters, but flexible with a spine.

My spine is that I don’t like handing out valuable information for free. I’ve earned that information by the hours I’ve spent studying and practicing.

At the same time I need to let go enough information to convince the client that I’m worth retaining (for this new phase).

My ploy is to treat the time as an opportunity for me to probe into my client’s problems, pain and requirements.

If things get sticky I can inject “I can make you a proposal on that”.

In other words, I have the information, and you’re welcome to receive it from me, once we are agreed that I will receive money from you.

Talk to Me !

Friday, July 15, 2011

Friday’s Excuses

Seth Godin’s blog item “ Looking for the right excuse ” hit the nail on the head.

It’s Friday morning.

“I’ll not try phoning people today; they’ll all be gearing up to get away to cottage country”.

It’s Monday morning.

“I’ll not try phoning people today; they’ll all be trying to cope with the email and voice-mail backlog from the weekend

It’s Tuesday morning.

“I’ll not try phoning this morning; I have to leave at 10;35 for a lunch appointment.

It’s Wednesday afternoon.

“I’ll not try phoning this afternoon ...”

I had not realized how often I can make an excuse NOT to pick up the phone and dial.

And how often I lie in bed at night ashamed because I’ve made no phone calls this day.

Talk to Me !

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Cold-Calling Sales is Dead

If there is a shred of doubt left in your mind, let me run this by you:

“Hi Laura, my name is Chris Greaves; I was reading the press release from yesterday and was struck by the number of complex documents you guys must produce”.

“Uh-huh”, she said.

“I thought you’d like to take a look at my free promotional tool; it’s called The Indexer and it produces an index of every interesting word in your document”.

“Uh-huh”, she said. And then she continued “I don’t see a use for it in our business.”.

Not “I don’t see a use for it in our business right now”, but “I don’t see a use for it in our business:.

Period.

And There You Have it

(1) There was no relationship

(2) There was no problem to solve.

Why WOULD I buy a new roof or a new driveway if I live in an apartment?

Don’t bother calling back, ever, and count as wasted the ten minutes spent screwing up courage to make the call, and the ten minutes spent licking wounds in the kitchen making another cup of coffee.

  • Because that telephone can really BITE.

You know what I mean.

There’s no future in making calls like that.

Ever!

So don’t make them.

Do Something Else Instead

I’m tempted to say “Do anything else instead”, but in my heart I know that Laura wasn’t buying because we don’t have any kind of a relationship.

Instead, take that same twenty minutes and put it into building a relationship.

The first step will still cost you something (time, thought, a postage stamp) but it won’t cost here anything.

Then spend time building that relationship.

Talk to Me !

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Promotion in Every Email

I am of two minds about this.

I’m sending an email to a client thanking them for the cheque, and asking if there’s anything else I can do for them.

They do not (yet) subscribe to my CEO newsletter.

At the foot of the email I have included a bit of news relevant to our project:-

P.S. I appear to have completed satisfactorily an application to be run daily on a horse-racing site (not my thing, as you know), which predicts tomorrow's wins based on a history of Trainer/Jockey.

I suppose that is akin to tracking share prices (indication of perceived company performance) based on a couple of financial or news factors over the previous two weeks.

My thinking is that EVERY email could carry a snippet of news telling the recipient what I’m up to.

It’s all part of the education of prospects and clients, isn’t it?

Talk to Me !

Monday, July 11, 2011

Improving Your Warm Calls

You need help with your telephone technique.

You wouldn’t be reading this otherwise!

Here’s What I Did:

I downloaded and installed a copy of Audacity from SourceForge.net.

Here’s What I do:

One minute before making the call, I load Audacity and check (by making and playing back a short recording), that the laptop microphone picks up my voice clearly and that volumes are set sufficient for me to hear what I’ve said.

Then I take a calming breath and pick up the phone.

An essential part of a sales conversation is feeding back the other party’s question.

“Well, Gordy, if I understand you, you’re saying that …”.

I am making penciled notes at the same time.

When the Call is Over

I stop the recorder and immediately save it as an MP3 file to my hard drive.

Now I can analyze the conversation to my heart’s content.

  • Pick out the flaws in my delivery.
  • Not lose track of the client’s important points.
  • And do a much better job next time.
  • And the time after that!

Management measures

Reckon on about 1 megabyte per minute. A 30-minute telephone call will consume about 30,000,000 bytes.

P.S. I talk too much, probably nerves; I must listen more:-

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

Talk to Me !

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Life-Time Technical Assistance

“Life-time Technical Assistance accompanies the training module”.

It says it right there on every web-based flyer, every downloadable PDF file at http://www.chrisgreaves.com/TrainCatalogue/

It says it at the foot of every invoice I issue.

What’s the Hang-up on Offering Life-Time Warranties?

Mine is a service-based business; I offer services to clients (Training, Consultation) and I offer products, which I support.

My biggest problem is that the phone isn’t ringing off the hook.

My smallest problem is that folks who’ve taken my training courses don’t call me asking for help. (Am I that good a trainer that they never need help?)

I welcome phone calls when things go wrong. It’s my business.

So, suppose you sell some really neat product, light enough and small enough that you can carry a few in your car when you head out.

Cost of the order of $25 at the supplier, sell at, say $50. (Quantities may vary).

And you’re worried that a lifetime guarantee is a Dangerous Thing

On a sheet of paper jot down the answers to these questions. (Don’t run to the computer, top-of-your-head is fine with me).

Question 1: How many years have I been selling this particular product?

Question 2: How many units have I sold in that time?

Question 3: How many units have been returned with a manufacturing defect?

Question 4: Per unit; what is my liability (expressed as the ratio of returned units to sold units, multiplied by the sales cost or cost-of-refund)

Question 5: Why am I so worried?

Now my analysis is simple, and you may feel your situation warrants deeper analysis; so find an actuary and invite him out to lunch.

Or ask your small-business accountant what his client’s find to do.

Because while you aren’t guaranteeing your product, your client is offering a lifetime warranty.

And stealing your customers.

It’s not about price.

It’s About SERVICE

Talk to Me !

Friday, July 8, 2011

Estimating and Cheating

A perennial problem in issuing proposals for automation lies in keeping everyone honest.

Here’s a proposal to automate a large portion of a task currently outsourced to a clerk.

The clerk is happy with the way things are – getting paid for work-from-home on an hourly basis.

I want to convince the client to install an automated procedure to do the boring and repetitive work, freeing up the clerk for intellectual tasks.

Nobody likes change, and outsourced clerks feel threatened by change, especially if there is even a faint whiff of “the computer doing my job”.

Preliminary Discussions

Preliminary discussions see the clerk and client (who has a long-term business relationship with the clerk) downplaying the time-cost of processing a document.

I think it takes 30 minutes per document, realistically. The Client says 15 minutes. The client wants to reduce the impact of savings in advance, to protect the clerk.

I have seen too many un-measured estimates to trust that kind of figure. I factor in mistakes, tea-breaks, and all the other delays that add to the cost of a project.

Nonetheless we will go ahead and use 15 minutes. Per document.

I maintain I can trim 80% of any manual task. That’s 12 minutes. That leaves 3 minutes, you think, for the clerk?

Wrong

That leaves 15 minutes for the clerk; after all, the automation is taking place before the clerk gets the automatically-processed documents.

Here’s where we keep everybody honest.

Essentially I have to process a document with one click, leaving less than 3 minutes tidy-up for the clerk to do. That’s well within my capabilities, and I’m not worried about that.

But now I can use the “15 minutes” to my advantage.

Advantage 1:

“Let’s see what value the clerk can add to these documents in 15 minutes”.

Now the 15 minutes seems like an awfully short time.

Advantage 2:

“Here’s a batch of 20 documents; get them back to us in five hours, starting from NOW”, and let’s see how much they have improved intellectually. How much value do you get for your outsourced buck now?

Advantage 3:

Here is a fresh batch of 20 documents seen by neither of us.

Send the raw 20 documents off to the clerk and ask them to do the basic cut-and-paste and formatting manually, which they claim they can do. “Here’s a batch of 20 documents; get them back to us in five hours, starting from NOW”

At the same time process the documents with my application. The time taken will be close to zero.

Wait five hours, then compare the output of my process with the documents returned by the clerk.

If mine are better but you’ve paid $200 to your clerk, what’s your decision?

In short, when the client/clerk set an unrealistically low estimate of time taken to perform a task, I can turn that against them, if need be, and put them under pressure as part of the evaluation.

Talk to Me !

Thursday, July 7, 2011

What’s Wrong with this Letter?

Please find attached a proposal for a pilot study within the {Your client here}.

Towards the end of our meeting on {date} you expressed keen interest in locating documents that are "missing something", so I have made that the focus of this proposal.

The long-term view is that any short-term effort at building knowledge about you vast base of documents will serve you well as you prepare to implement a Document Management System.

For example, owning a good set of keywords, or of rules to locate Interesting Words will be useful in examining documents owned by staff members approaching retirement or maternity leave.

With thanks

Chris Greaves

No Call to Action!

I can’t believe I sent this off.

Humans respond to commands (provided of course that they are reasonable commands)

  • Please read the proposal.
  • Please study the proposal.
  • Please call me Friday after you have read the proposal.
  • Please reply to this email letting me know your feelings.
  • Please let me know if you will be making a decision before {future date}

And So On.

But “Here it is”?

I Need My Head Read!

Talk to Me !

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

It’s Not Bragging If You’ve Got Proof

A CTV article , apparently reposted from WALLACE IMMEN at the Globe And Mail “ Getting the boss to pony up ” includes the text I have used as the title of this blog.

Solo entrepreneurs often have a tendency to belittle skills.

Indeed I suspect that solo entrepreneurs can be classified into two groups:

Group 1. Folks like me who are just passionate about what we do, have been doing it in one form or another all our lives, and will be happy to die in harness doing what we love.

Group 2. A smaller group who are passionate about money and have reasonable goals to retire in luxurious comfort sometime before they reach 40.

The second group gets early retirement because they hit on an idea and pursue it relentlessly, promoting it at every opportunity.

The first group (me included) focus on the back-room activities, and blush when someone asks us just how many documents we can process in an hour (about six thousand!), or how many pounds of worms it will take to digest 3 tons of cow manure per week.

But Then . . .

It is said that every prospect is hoping that the next meeting with a consultant – it could be you – is desperately hoping that THIS meeting provides the solution. They want a solution, so if we have measurable (quantified) proof and can replicate our results, we ought to be trumpeting the FACTS so that we can make that prospect happier sooner.

And our web site (mine is a disaster in this sense) should be an assembly of quantified facts, testimonials, and reproducible proof-of-concept demonstrations that will bring the prospect to comfort and confidence in our ability.

Talk to Me !

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

The Flavor of the Proposal

In a recent ITWorld Canada blog item, David Wright said:-

“In the early days of IT Projects, the stated benefit was usually the automation of manual effort; this was not always as simple to propose as it sounds, because automation usually was translated into reduced head count for the business. If the staff in the area affected by a project perceived it could lead to lay-offs, this could kill a project because you almost always need those people as the business experts for the business scope of the project”.

David then went on to point out that instead of laying-off staff, the benefit could be seen as freeing-up-mental power (my interpretation).

I am currently putting out a proposal for a large government agency.

I recognize that practically every automation project I propose falls into one of these categories:-

Category 1: Reduce staff needed to perform a task

Category 2: Free up staff to focus on intellectual aspects of the business

Category 3: Produce an otherwise unattainable result.

There are other categories, add them as they come to mind.

The point I wish to make is this:

By choosing an appropriate category as my theme, I can reduce the negative impact of the proposal and accentuate the positive impact, the benefit.

For the case I have in mind – cataloging a collection of 2,000 documents before the staff member retires – is a task that just cannot be accomplished in the present state of the organization.

It’s not a question of laying-off staff (Category 1) or of frightening people into thinking that they might have to think (Category 2) as much as a message to senior management, no need to involve junior staff, that they can get something done that they could not otherwise achieve without blowing their budget on part-time help.

I shall take category 3 and use it as the theme of my proposal.

Talk to Me !

Monday, July 4, 2011

LinkedIn – and the Drudgery of Updating Same

Every now and then, LinkedIn nags me to update my profile, or to update something.

All the time colleagues nag me to update my LinkedIn profile.

Apparently regular changes to my LinkedIn profile re-assure the entire world that I am still alive and breathing.

So Phone Me!

This morning I had to drag out my trusty all-purpose generic resume and issue it to a curious bystander.

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

That’s just page 1 of 10.

Ten years ago I whittled it down from 17 pages to about 5 pages, and it has blossomed again.

This is not a resume I’d issue in response to a particular position – that would need to be a custom-tailored resume

But in glancing at this generic resume I realized that besides the four chunks you see here from page 1, there are another eight similar chunks, making a dozen major areas of work.

Visit www.ChrisGreaves.com for this image! LinkedIn2.png

Then I have divided my Work Experience into 5-year chunks, so there’s another eleven chunks.

In short, about 23 updates I can issue once a fortnight.

That ought to keep everybody happy!

Talk to Me !

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Make a Copy?

There are times when I get nervous. Typically when I’m entering an office or a boardroom to start a demonstration, or setting up a classroom for a training session.

And sometimes I feel that I need literally just one minute to be alone in the room, to “come to terms” with the physical location. Sometimes it is no more than being allowed to sort through my bag of tricks and plug in the computer, or to make sure that I have me notes in correct sequence.

Most of the times this comes automatically as my host asks “Can I get you anything? A coffee?”, and I always respond “Yes please, cream and sugar”, the extras designed to spin out the absence by an extra 30 seconds.

But if that doesn’t work, I pull out the sheet of paper that has my script or agenda on, and ask, ever-so-politely, “Would you like to make a copy of this for yourself? It’s the script I’ll be running through”, and always, off they go, for anything from 2 to 5 minutes, depending on the popularity of the local copier.

(Takes deep breath)

“Ahh!”

Talk to Me !

Friday, July 1, 2011

Postal Mail-Outs – Do They Work?

On the 5th of April I phoned her; she is in the position formerly occupied by Christine. I introduced myself and we chatted.

Two weeks later I left a voicemail; no response.

On the 3rd June I issued a LinkedIn invitation, and this seemed to have no impact.

On the 24th June I postal-mailed out a little 2-page essay on the game of Diplomacy as an adjunct to training in communication skills.

It would have landed on her desk Tuesday or Wednesday after the postal strike ended.

On Thursday, June 30, 2011 I learned by email that we are now connected on LinkedIn.

Postal Mail-Outs – Do They Work?

I can’t say for sure.

But it seems like they do.

Talk to Me !