Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Who is this Guy Chris Greaves? -2

Two months ago in Who is this Guy Chris Greaves? I issued some crude statistics on what a CEO would see if he received a mailing from me and decided to check me out by using the Google search engine.

I have re-issued the search with these results:

Visit www.ChrisGreaves.com for this image! ChrisGreaves2_only.png

Visit www.ChrisGreaves.com for this image! ChrisGreaves2_toronto.png

Visit www.ChrisGreaves.com for this image! ChrisGreaves2_mississauga.png

Quantities may vary if you repeat the search, depending on the date, and on the size of your monitor screen.

The results can be summarized as follows

Name Only

& Toronto

& Mississauga

4 out 7 or 57%

10 out of 10 or 100%

Top 6 out of 10 or 60%

The only change is in the Mississauga rankings (I live in Toronto, but right on the border of Mississauga), so this is an improvement, but not by much.

The good news is that “Arguments with the 407-ETR” has dropped off the radar; that sort of thing isn’t likely to impress a CEO at first glance.

Over the past two weeks I’ve been working diligently at tweeting my blogs, products and services, but I know I need to get more out there.

It’s a process, not an act!

Talk to Me !

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

1 Easy Way to Get THAT Task Done

We all have them. The proposal that ought to have been completed yesterday; the article that should have been submitted last Tuesday.

I've been using a simple solution for several years now.

Here's the trick.

Clear Your Desktop!

I've got you there, haven't I? Because you don't know whether I mean your real desktop (made of wood) or the screen that faces you as you read this.

I refer to the screen that faces you as you read this.

No wait! There's more

Most users I see have a screen desktop that is a vast un-navigable array of icons. There are shortcuts and there are documents, and I get paid $100 per hour to sit while they mutter "It's here somewhere".

Silly really.

"A place for everything and everything in its place" was a motto my mother never taught me; if she had have done so, my early life would have been a great deal more pleasant.

I had to learn the hard way.

Make an effort, today, to start filing things on your hard drive in a logical pattern - client data in a subfolder of "Clients\", personal data in a subfolder of "Personal\".

And stop storing data on your boot partition (drive C) in that "Documents And Folders" thing. Drag everyone of them to your data partition (probably drive D) and stop using your desktop as a landfill site.

Use the QuickLaunch toolbar for those tasks (programs or documents!) you use throughout the day.

Then your desktop will be as tidy as mine:-

Visit www.ChrisGreaves.com for this image! Desktop001.png

Here's the 1-Step

At the start of the day, make a shortcut icon to ONE, and only one task that should be completed before the end of the day.

Visit www.ChrisGreaves.com for this image! Desktop002.png

Just one. Not two.

That icon will remind you that there is a priority task.

And it will get done.

Talk to Me !

P.S.

Tomorrow is another shortcut!

Monday, November 28, 2011

Christmas Is Coming! - 3

In Christmas Is Coming! (2) I continued an outline of plans for printing Christmas Cards.

Today there’s a fresh idea that can be used by all of us.

First off: Do you sometimes shudder at the thought of picking up the phone and making a “cold call”?

I knew you did.

I do too.

Sometimes.

Here’s What’s Good About this Time of Year

Call it Christmas, Hanukah, The Big Sleepover, or what you will: just about everybody is going around TELLING people to have a prosperous New Year.

Now let’s suppose you are a practicing Christian; you’ll be OK saying “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year”, except for your fear of cold-calling.

Now let’s suppose you are a practicing Jew; you’ll be OK saying “Happy Hanukkah and a Happy New Year”, except for your fear of cold-calling.

Now let’s suppose you are atheist; you’ll CAN be OK saying “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year”, except for your fear of cold-calling.

Is it Ethical to Wish, Say, a Muslim a Merry Christmas?

I think so. Does your Muslim (or Jewish or atheist) contact celebrate Christmas? Possibly not.

Does your contact recognize that in your country Christmas (Hanukah etc) is a major festival? Certainly so?

But what if your contact is a rabid anti-Christmas (any-Hanukah etc) fanatic?

Then you probably don’t want to be doing business with them anyway.

Think About it

Business is about compromise; we compromise on features, price, delivery date, schedules. The whole thing about the word “Entrepreneur” (“between”-“taker”) is about give and take, flexibility.

You aren’t asking your contact to meet you for midnight mass on December 24th.

You are calling to express a genuine hope that the next week or two will be peaceful and restful, and that following the break, the next months will be prosperous for your contact.

Of course you want them to be prosperous: if your contact gets prosperous, there’ll be enough money in the budget to retain you!

Now About that Cold-Calling

Cold-calling has a bad reputation because it seems founded on approaching a total stranger and asking for money; that’s getting awfully close to a hold-up, and that’s not good.

· But for the next 4 weeks you aren’t calling to sell anything.

· For the next 4 weeks you aren’t calling to probe about anything.

· For the next 4 weeks you are calling SOLELY to emit a wish from you to them.

That’s it.

Visualize the Call

“Hi Jerry, it’s Chris. I’m just phoning to wish you a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year”.

Suppose the phone goes into voice-mail. That’s a bonus. Your shyness doesn’t matter. You’ve left a short and positive message, and you have re-established your name in the front of your prospect’s mind.

Suppose you get a gatekeeper? You can ask to be put through to Jerry’s line, and if the gatekeeper asks to take a message, You can ask to be put through to Jerry’s voice-mail (see above).

Suppose you get straight through on Jerry’s direct line? That’s just great. “Hi Jerry, it’s Chris. I’m just phoning to wish you a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year”.

And that’s ALL you need to say.

You aren’t selling today.

That can come in the New year.

Today you are calling ONLY to express your wish that your contact enjoys this time of year.

Talk to Me!

P.S.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Hanukah, Seasons Greetings, Have a great ....

Saturday, November 26, 2011

You’re Right!

Don’t you just love hearing that?

Don’t you just love it when the other person puts you on a pedestal with those two words?

I know that those two words make me feel just GREAT!

So why aren’t I using them more often to make people warm to me?

Talk to Me!

Friday, November 25, 2011

But What Really Blew Me Away

Another great little post from Seth Godin.

I’m tempted to reproduce it in full here, it’s so concise, but go read it for yourself.

I plan to spend more time examining what makes ME feel good at places where I do business!

Talk to Me!

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Business Tweeting

Almost a year ago I documented my Introduction to the World of Tweeting, and am gradually getting a grip, as we say in the trade.

One of the subtleties is recognizing that my target audience tends to be online during business hours, and tends not to be so attentive outside those hours.

So I’ve tried to tweet about important topics – new services, new products, strong blog postings of mine and so on - during business hours, and outside of business hours I schedule those tweets to appear early in the next business day.

In the early hours of this morning I realized that I can still keep my name in front of people by using this slack time-of-day to retweet other users tweets, thereby getting myself into their good books (“Thanks for ReTweeting me!”), without cluttering up the twitter space during business hours.

Like I said, subtle but, I believe, significant.

Talk to Me!

Wednesday, November 23, 2011


A Stamp Date Stamp

Wednesday, October 05, 2011


I’m feeling quite pleased with myself.

In Staying Ahead of the Avalanche 4 and related posts I’ve described my efforts at touching contacts, mainly with postal mail.

Inevitably I run out of my customized postage stamps, (Running out of Picture Postage Stamps), or get enthusiastic and run of an abundance of letters, and then I’m faced with a small hill of addressed envelopes waiting to go out.

Of course I want to keep my mailings roughly in sequence, and one day last week found me sorting a wad of envelopes in name sequence, then cross-checking them, record-by-record, against my data base.

What a waste of my time!

This morning I hit on the idea of augmenting my envelope macro to drop the print-date right where it will be hidden by the postage stamp.

Once they arrive!

Talk to Me!

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Staying Ahead of the Avalanche - 4

My first week of “slack time”, but not really slack. I now have 377 contacts on my list. Two were due for processing today – instances where The Prospector alerted me to a promotion.

Those done I check the “follow-up due today”, and find none.

Makes sense. These past few weeks I’ve strenuously “touched” every contact and set their follow-up date to be 2 months ahead.

Now I have a sense of foreboding: Is this the calm before the storm?

I decide to check the distribution of my follow-up dates in an Excel pivot table:

weeks

Total

-38

1

-30

2

-28

1

-27

1

-25

1

-18

1

-14

1

-12

1

-11

1

-9

1

-8

1

-5

2

-1

2

0

31

1

18

2

22

3

35

4

20

5

7

6

13

8

2

9

39

10

81

11

59

12

29

13

5

Total

377

The average number of follow-ups per week starting at today (week zero) is 27. That means if I “touch” 27 contacts per week, I’ll stay on top of things.

The follow-ups prior to this week need attention. Are they inactive records? Did they slip through the net?

Given that every day or so I receive an “immediate” update from The Prospector, I should contemplate a goal of 30 contacts per week from now on. That would be 6 envelopes, emails or phone calls per day Monday through Friday.

Talk to Me!

Monday, November 21, 2011

5 Pet Peeves

The San Francisco Chronicle in a post titled “LinkedIn’s top pet peeves at the office” lists them as follows:

1: People who don’t take ownership of their actions. This was picked by 78 percent of the respondents.

2: “Negative Nellys” who constantly complain.

3: People who don’t clean up after themselves when using the fridge, the microwave or other common areas.

4: Boring meetings that start late or go way too long.

5: People who “consistently seem to miss your email (you can only use the “it hit my Spam” excuse so many times).”

What about people like us who don’t trudge into an office at nine each morning?

1: I can take ownership of my actions and show responsibility by admitting fault and mistakes as soon as I see them. That let’s my clients know that I’m honest and won’t let surprise cost-overruns leap out at them. Fixing mistakes as soon as they happen is the fastest way to get rid of that dirty smell.

2: This is easy for me. “The answer is always YES!”, and each time I’ve answered “No”, I’ve regretted it. The journey should be fun with someone else who is prepared to give-it-a-whirl.

3: I don’t share a common kitchen area, but I can clean up areas of the project used by me. That includes printing a hard-copy of a document and proof-reading it in a different room a day later to catch even more typographical errors.

4: Each email or phone conversation has a goal. I ought to be aware of that goal before I pick up the phone, or start typing. Staying focused on the issue lets me deal with clients quickly and frees them up to get back to their own job.

5: Making sure I respond to all emails the same day is mandatory, even if the response is just an acknowledgement that I’ve received the email. “I’ll need a couple of days to put this together” let’s my client budget their time and schedules. Plus it gives me a chance to send two emails instead of one!

Talk to Me!

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Getting the Word Out - 2

(Please see also Getting the Word Out )

More thoughts as they arise:

  • Thought 1:

No matter what I’m publishing, it’s going public because *I* think it is of value to the world out there. I should, at the very least, Tweet everything I publish. It is up to my Twitter followers to decide whether what I create is of value or interest to them; it’s not for me to decide their likes and dislikes.

  • Thought 2:

Some blog items, Clear Thinking is a good example, are immediate candidates to be appended to my “From The Blogs” section in the embryonic next-month’s issue of the eLetter. By appending them as I publish them, I reduce time spent looking for articles at the next publishing date. My function is reduced to that of deleting unwanted items.

  • Thought 3:

Tweets automatically get posted to LinkedIn and from there, I think, my LinkedIn groups or connections get notified; I’m not sure how that works, but I do see that LinkedIn notices all my tweets.

  • Thought 4:

Most blogs, and Clear Thinking is one of the set, don’t warrant an entry in an updated LinkedIn summary. That area is better suited for new products or service of a major nature.

  • Thought 5:

Having begun the process of documenting the procedures for publishing, I find that I discard 50% of my bookmarked news items! They’ve been sitting there for so long that I can no longer recall why I thought that they were important. Dealing with them through my speedy process at the time they arise will mean a better harvest for me.

  • Thought 6:

My Twitter audience is business-oriented, and while most of us will glance at twitter during the weekend, the majority seem to be desk-bound, like me. It makes sense to use a service such as Twuffer to schedule tweets on the weekend to appear the following Monday or Tuesday during business hours.

  • Thought 7:

My preference is to compose my web items in Microsoft Word and compile them to web pages, then copy from the web pages to the blogs. This gives me a chance to examine, inspect the material, test links and so on before making the issue public. For example, a candidate for Macros In Minutes gets posted to http://www.chrisgreaves.com/MacrosInMinutes/index.htm before being posted to http://macrosinminutes.blogspot.com/ .

  • Thought 8:

A working document has been made: Getting the Word Out - 3

Talk to Me !

Friday, November 18, 2011

Getting the Word Out

(Please see also Getting the Word Out – 2 )

I’ve just published my monthly eLetter. Not a big deal; takes me about 45 minutes, because it’s largely a matter of collecting stuff that I’ve published or created over the past month.

And therein lies a problem: I write a lot and develop a lot and answer a lot of questions, but I tend to do them without any sort of framework.

So I’ve decided to formalize myself!

My goal is to “Get people to know about me, to recognize me”.

My objectives can be summarized here as “For each publishable event or trigger, emit it via Twitter, LinkedIn or my monthly eLetter”.

My Output Channels are Numerous

  1. My small Emailing-list of fellow-entrepreneurs
  2. My home page blog www.ChrisGreaves.com
  3. My Clear Thinking blog
  4. My Macros in Minutes blog
  5. My Torontopreneur blog
  6. My Squared Time blog
  7. My vermicomposting blog
  8. My Toronto Transit Omission blog
  9. The itWorldCanada blog
  10. My YouTube videos
  11. My downloads page
  12. Technical white papers in PDF format
  13. My SUFE blog
  14. My What’s Your Problem? blog
  15. Articles mailed as flyers to my contacts list
  16. The few high-level technical forums I frequent.

That’s a lot of channels, in various states of repair. There are more that have slipped my mind; clearly this is out of control.

My Sources (or Triggers) are Numerous

Web pages, especially newspaper articles and press releases.

Ideas that seem to arise spontaneously in my brain.

  • My services.
  • My products.
  • Queries that arrive by phone or email

For Each Source or Trigger Event

There should be published something, somewhere, about me, what I did for someone.

I need a process sheet for each channel that provides me with mechanical steps I can take to publish my claim to fame, without distracting me from my other work. That is, a source or trigger, once resolved, should drop onto a conveyor belt and come out the other end as a published item.

Example 1:

I bookmarked a newspaper item “Einstein Challenged” about a recent experiment that suggested particles exceeded the speed of light; I have an opinion on this. I can write up a commentary on my ClearThinking blog, then Tweet it. I might append it to a weekly LinkedIn summary. I might issue it as an article to the eLetter or as a flyer to the C-crowd; it is a good example of my thinking process. It is certainly a candidate for a link within my eLetter.

Example 2:

I wrote another cute macro that highlights duplicated words within each sentence of a document; a style checker, you might say. I add the macro to my MiniU template. I make a video of it in operation and publish it to YouTube. I write a Macros In Minutes blog item. Then I tweet it, and possibly add it to me weekly LinkedIn summary.

Example 3:

Many of my web-page groups, List Numbering is an example, can be loaded directly to a PDF format. A link to that PDF file can be set on the web pages, and can also be listed in my Downloads page, with the benefit of allowing me multiple tweets or updates via LinkedIn.

Example 4:

I wrote a proof-of-concept tool “Follow” to do some heavy-lifting in Social Networking. It is not an application really; it is driven by an embedded string, without the database management back end, but it is a significant achievement. I have made a video on my videos page, uploaded the video to YouTube, blogged it in Torontopreneur (although it won’t appear for another week) and will Tweet it. But first I will add it to LinkedIn as an accomplishment. After Tweeting it I emitted a short email to 20 of my entrepreneurial peers.

A Learning Process

This will be a learning process over the next few months.

Today is the best time to start, because I have almost an entire month before my next eLetter issue is due out, and while retroactively fitting out my channels is going to be a beastly amount of work, I can start going forwards today with a better plan or structure to make the most of what I do.

Talk to Me !

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Staying Ahead of the Avalanche - 3

Well! This feels good.

I have run through all 376 records in my contact list.

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

For the past few weeks I have opened up the database form and clicked on the button “FollowUpToday”; there are usually 3 or 4 records that had been marked for flow-up on that particular day.

Once those were done I’d click on “FollowUpPast”, and it’s that count that I’ve been whittling down at the rate of 15 envelopes printed per day.

This morning that command showed up empty at around 10 a.m., so I have not one single contact record untouched over the past two months.

I’m taking a break.

Tomorrow I’ll click the “FollowUpToday” and probably come up empty.

Then I’ll click the “FollowUpPast” and probably come up empty.

Then I’ll click the “StalestActive” and it will show me a record due for follow-up on the 31st of October (I just checked). I’ll be able to reduce the interval on my “touchings” and make a point of working on anything up to 10 records per day to keep up to date – postal mailings, emails, phone calls – all part of the mix.

Talk to Me !

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Management Measures Supplies

It’s that time of year when people hand out “day-timers”, promotional material that comes with a message.

Visit www.ChrisGreaves.com for this image! ManagementMeasuresEnvelopes_HPIM4205.JPG

Here’s a typical example, provided for me from a neighbour, at my request.

Visit www.ChrisGreaves.com for this image! ManagementMeasuresEnvelopes_HPIM4206.JPG

Inside we have one face per month.

The booklet itself occupies very little space, but we can load the inside with every cyclic expense in the coming year, the better to budget and plan our expenses.

Example 1:

Note the date of replacement of each printer cartridge.

Example 2:

Note the quantity of postage stamps at each purchase

Example 3:

Note subscriptions to networking groups, ISPs, domain registration and the like.

Now you have no excuse for ignorance of upcoming expenses as they fall due.

And yes, the booklet lives on your desk, close to your keyboard and phone!

Talk to Me !

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Staying Ahead of the Avalanche - 2

I’m almost up to scratch!

This morning there were 19 stale addresses, and I have been churning out 15 per day, so that means I’ll probably get completely up to date tomorrow.

Or so I Thought

Part of my procedure is to research each contact on CNW before printing a letter; that way I get to add a personal touch to each letter.

But today, CNW is not slow; it is unresponsive.

My rate has dropped from one letter each 5 minutes to 30+ minutes per letter.

Not a Good Use of My Time

So at 2pm, with 9 outstanding envelopes, I’m calling it quits for the day.

Finishing on Friday instead of Thursday is not a big deal.

Better I do something useful than sit staring at the monitor screen, drumming my fingers ...

Talk to Me !

Monday, November 14, 2011

Christmas Is Coming! - 2

In Christmas Is Coming! I outlined my plans for printing Christmas Cards.

I want to keep the essays flowing, and have been pondering who gets a card.

I figure to keep on my regular schedule of printing an essay-sheet (or “flyer” if you will), and mailing it off in a regular envelope to any contact who has not yet received two flyers.

Anyone with 3 or more flyers mailed, or people I’ve met face-to-face, get a card.

The rest, I fell, might see it as just too presumptuous of me if they received a card?

Talk to Me !

Saturday, November 12, 2011

When is a Virus Not a Virus?

When it’s not!

Visit www.ChrisGreaves.com for this image! WhenIsAVirus_HPIM4153.JPG

I make no apologies for the setup shown in the photograph.

That’s my “Big Beige Box”, used to be my main system, now serves me as a printer server and more importantly, plays music 24/7. The music is piped through the Noresco Quadraphonic amplifier and thence to most rooms in my home.

The Panasonic mobile phone is one of three I collected from the recycle bin; it works better than the set I paid money for at Zellers!

Over the past few days, some sort of virus has hit the BBB and not until this morning did I track it down.

I should state that I am beyond-paranoid about infections, with one memory-resident package and two on-demand packages checking my systems.

I don’t do any web browsing or email on the BBB; it just plays music through WinAmp, so I’ve been in a mild state of shock when the WinAmp program emits “Fur Elise” repeatedly.

I switch to the BBB and shut down WinAmp, thinking it has a bug of some sort, but “Fur Elise” continues as strident as ever.

I fire up Task Manager with Ctrl-Alt-Del and search running tasks; no sign of anything malign.

Then “Fur Elise” stops, so something I’ve nudged has frightened the virus into silence.

  • Darn thing started up again this morning at 7:00 a.m..

In desperation I shut down the BBB with the reset button on the front panel. Axed it dead. No Power. Powerless.

  • “Fur Elise” continued!

How can a computer play music once the power is off?

This must be some sort of weird virus in my Sound Card? No.

The Panasonic mobile phone has an alarm set for 7:00 a.m.

It plays “Fur Elise” repeatedly, then stops after one minute.

Phew!

Talk to Me !

Friday, November 11, 2011

Management Measures Envelopes

The business of printing out newsletter sheets to prospects continues at the rate of 15 per day, but this time it’s different.

This time I’m counting envelopes instead of just keeping an eye on the “Stale Record Count”.

What’s the Difference?

When I’m merely working to get the record-counter down, it’s easy enough to shunt a data record forward, which reduces the record-count, but doesn’t actually TOUCH the prospect.

When I’m working to feed 15 envelopes through the printer, 15 envelopes are reaching out to touch the prospect.

The envelope-method guarantees that 15 envelopes leave the office today. At the end of the day’s run, I collect 15 fresh envelopes and lave them on the laser printer to dry out ready for tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow morning I’ll feed 15 envelopes, one by one, into the printer, and my job is not done until 15 envelopes are printed.

If I damage one, I tear it up and replace it with a fresh one from the stationery cupboard.

When I worked with record-counters, I slacked off.

Management Measures Tangible Deliverables.

Talk to Me !

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Power Lunches

http://www.lawyersweekly.ca/index.php?section=article&volume=31&number=18&article=5

“Today there is a void of connection with others,” noted Louise Fox, Toronto-based owner of the etiquetteladies.com , an online video etiquette training website for business.

“The power lunch is not just about conducting business, it is a viable way of establishing a connection with others, and establishing and nurturing business relationships. No amount of emails, texts, tweets, or phone calls can replace the personal connection and the social aspect of the power lunch.”

Time spent dining with clients, or prospective clients, connects you to more than their business. “It helps you plug into what’s going on in the business community generally or their sector specifically,” said Hornberger.

Lunch with Me !

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Management Measures Cartridges

Sure, you complain about the high cost of Laser-Printer Cartridges.

But justify, to me, the facts on which you base you complaint.

You’ll tell me that a cartridge costs $70 at the store (Quantities may vary!), and I’ll believe that you pay $70 per cartridge; no need to produce the receipt.

But then I’ll ask you how many sheets you get per cartridge, and you’ll stare blankly for three seconds, then invent a number; you’re lying, aren’t you!

So then I’ll ask you how often you replace your cartridges, and again, I’ll receive the blank look and the wild guess. And we know that a wild guess isn’t a confirmed fact, so it’s a lie, isn’t it?

Visit www.ChrisGreaves.com for this image! ManagementMeasuresCartridges_HPIM4129.JPG

Here’s what you do:

Whenever you replace a cartridge, stick a little adhesive label on it with the place and cost of purchase, and the date you popped the cartridge in the printer.

Visit www.ChrisGreaves.com for this image! ManagementMeasuresCartridges_HPIM4130.JPG

The next time I replace a yellow cartridge, I’ll know exactly how many days it has lasted.

Exercise

Assuming I don’t have a paper-counter on my printer, how would I measure how many sheets of paper I get per Yellow cartridge? Per Magenta cartridge?

Talk to Me !

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Why Wouldn’t You Buy this?

I’ve listened to Rick, developed a course outline, built a web page, and emailed the link to him with a question: “Why wouldn’t you pay to attend this course?”.

His reply, naturally, “No reason; I know that you built this course around our lunchtime conversation about my needs!”.

That’s the First Hurdle Cleared

Before I email the link to 100 prospects, I have five more emails to issue, seriatim, as we used to say.

To Promod, Cathy, David, Ken and Wallace, each in turn, “Why wouldn’t you pay to attend this course?”.

Each person will come up with at least one objection, which I can then deal with by adding it to my material;

Another Hurdle Cleared!

In short, by asking a small focus group for their objections up front, I can possibly double the positive response rate to my sales mail-out.

“Why Wouldn’t You do this?”

Talk to Me !

Monday, November 7, 2011

5-Step Method to Cut Down Your Paper Usage

Unload the paper from the feed-bin or paper-tray in your printer.

Place the paper in a tray or shallow cardboard box at least 5 steps away from your printer.

From now on, to print a document, grab a sheet of paper and stand there using the manual feed of your printer.

I guarantee you’ll use significantly less paper.

And get more exercise.


P.S. You can save even more paper by downloading the free utility application ZoomP .

Talk to Me !

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Sleuthing that Mailing Address

Frustrated with the “Contact Us” page that has you fill out a form, with no bricks-and-mortar address?

So was I until I hit on the idea of clicking on the “Legal” button!

I think that they HAVE to post a mailing address; it’s the law!

Talk to Me !

Friday, November 4, 2011

Sad Saga

The Prospector often enough paints a rosy picture of life in the heady world of High Finance on Bay Street.

And then it paints a sad story, from time to time.

I have Prospector set up to tell me when any of my contact corporations is in the news.

So last month I read of some fraud in some company:

Visit www.ChrisGreaves.com for this image! Saga_001.png

I don’t know the facts, just what is printed in the press release.

Fourteen Million dollars is not chump change, not even on Bay Street.

My guess too is that the company is ethically bound to announce this problem rather than hide it under the rug.

Then this month I read:

Visit www.ChrisGreaves.com for this image! Saga_002.png

I had not yet met the CFO; given a few more months I might have taken him to lunch.

Was he the one who perpetrated the fraud?

I don’t know.

Is he the one who has to resign and take the blame?

I don’t know.

All I know is that, with a weary sigh, I remove his record from my contact list.

Talk to Me !

The Next Day

Property manager bilked $20M in condo fraud, victims claim

Talk to Me !

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Running out of Picture Postage Stamps

Well, this is a mini-catastrophe.

I have just hand-signed about 50 letters to be mailed out, and ten of them have timely notes such as “Congratulations on your new appointment”.

But I’ve run out of my customized Picture Postage stamps.

Uh-Oh!

Those letters won’t go out until the next order comes in.

The less-timely letters can wait a week, I guess, but how I wish I had set aside ten stamps as an emergency-reserve for timely mailings!

Talk to Me !

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Staying In Touch – 7

I know you read a different blog yesterday that said “Staying In Touch Is Important”.

Today I’m going to tell you WHY it is important.

A client has asked me if I know a reliable web designer.

I immediately thought of Carole and David, and forwarded my client’s email to them both.

Why Carole?

Carole put me in touch with a prospective client two weeks ago, and I’ve been chatting with that prospect for a week or so now.

Why David?

David and I agreed to meet for breakfast next Friday, so he’s been on my mind.

Here’s the Catch

Because Carole and David, both web designers, were in my mind/brain/head, my reaction was instant: “Yes! I know TWO web designers; I’ll click “Forward” and send this email to them.

I did NOT go to my contacts database and search nearly 400 records to find out who has been tagged with “web” or “html” or “Sales”.

Talk to Me !

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

You can Learn an Awful Lot, Just by Reading

Sometimes a solution just pops right out at me!

Some seven hours have been spent to date in conversations and proposals for an individual; I should have spotted this a mile off.

Friday saw the arrival of a two-page response to my response to a two-page enquiry about my proposal to charge $500 to begin specification of a multi-site data-mining project.

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

(You’re not meant to be able to read it; just to get an idea of the task facing me this morning).

A second reading turns up this delightful little nugget:

“I am concerned that the real cost of this project is much more than $500, and I'll be disappointed with what we get with the initial work.”

Well!

Absolutely. This is NOT a $500 project; there are at least 5 hours involved in laying out a solid foundation in specifications of the database, parsing requirements, data validity, and a sound overall structure for the rest of the project.

That’s without taking into account the seven hours I’ve spent to date.

The prospect is already prepared to be disappointed; there is an element of “I knew when we started I was going to be disappointed”; but Management Measures, and it’s the $500 that caught my eye.

My solution is time-effective:

I am concerned that the real cost of this project is much more than $500, and I'll be disappointed with what we get with the initial work.

CG> “My experience with this kind of project, if it is to be done properly, on budget and schedule, is that it will cost you more than $500 to achieve. If your budget is $500 or less, I think you are going to be greatly disappointed. I am sorry to have taken up your time in this matter.”

Click “SEND” and we are done.

On to the next task.

P.S.

The reply comes back within minutes:

AS> We don't have any budget for this really. I would have to decide what is worth it to invest and whether you are the right person with the right personality to get it done. I think witnessing the way you quoted this tells me that while you may have the right talent to do this, I am not sure you understood the scope of the work that had to be done, and was a bit disingenuous in your quote. That's why I was trying to clarify exactly what you were saying.

AS> I appreciate you being upfront about the work and quote. It helps us understand what may be involved in just the spec writing, which is quite a bit of work like I feared.

There is, you will note, no “call to action” here, so I am let off the hook.

On to the next client.

Talk to Me !