How to Get Paid for Freebies

We all have them (I hope); friends and colleagues, close associates, for whom we wouldn’t dream of charging a penny to help them with their spreadsheet, document, web site or accounting.

Sometimes it seems just too crass to even think about mentioning money.

This is not the client who calls up saying “I know it will take you only 5 minutes”, selfishly overlooking the fact that you spent 50 hours learning how to do it.

This is the colleague who drives you to lunch each time you meet, the one you phone to cry on a shoulder.

Here’s What You do

I’ll take a spreadsheet as an example; you can change the scenery.

Griselda wants to know how to set up her spreadsheet; you like Griselda and she likes you and you scratch each other’s back once a month or so.

Invite Griselda over for the morning; she’ll miss her tweets and eMail, so she’ll not hang around for ever. That puts a time limit on the face-to-face stuff.

Tell Griselda BEFORE she comes over that the spreadsheet is free, but if she feels bad about it she can buy you lunch. (Always order the corned-beef sandwich with spicy-fries; you can eat only half of it anyway; bring the other half home for a second lunch tomorrow).

Tell Griselda BEFORE she comes over that you’ll support her in her endeavors up to an including the last day of the following month. That’s anything from one to two months hand-holding.

Absolutely Free

But tell Griselda BEFORE she comes over that after the end of the first complete calendar month you’ll charge her for support at 50% your regular rate, payable by retainer in advance.

Is that Asking Too Much?

I think not.

Griselda is acutely aware that she is "imposing” on you, and you on her; but as well she values your friendship and hates leeching off you; as you do her.

This establishes, up front (“Good fences make good neighbors”) that a no-strings freebie is being offered, and accepted, but that if the task becomes onerous, you will be recompensed without placing a burden of guilt on here.

Talk to Me!

When the Supply Chain Goes Bad

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I order postage stamps and they arrive by Canada Post.

That they arrive is a bit of a miracle. The short story is that I enquired of the supplier as to why the stamps arrived anywhere from 4 to 28 days after being ordered. Turns out Picture Postage is at the mercy of Canada Post, who stipulate “that we must allow 5-15 business for delivery once the order is shipped”.

Now 5 business days (BUSINESS days) to mail a letter from a major Canadian city to another major Canadian city seems a bit much to me.

15 days is downright lacking in responsibility.

My enquiry has resulted in the supplier advising Canada Post that the shipment has been “what they consider to be lost in the mail”, so now I’ll wait while another order is prepared and, perhaps, lost-in-the-mail or else takes 3 weeks (15 BUSINESS days!).

The clincher is this:

I have the option of using an overnight courier other than CPC, that is not looked at fondly around here as all parties would like to keep everything closely tied together from an overall business prospective.

The Overall Business Perspective seems to be that the supplier and CPC have to work together on this, but the supplier ships within 48 hours of receiving the order, so CPC is letting down the side.

And where, in the name of all that’s profitable, is the client (me) in all of this?

I don’t hear anything about “Gee we’d better make sure this gets tightened up”.

All the more incredible because I am, after all, ordering postage stamps that should be delivered by the very organization (CPC) that profits by my making use of postal services!

Talk to Me!

“A Client is Bad-Mouthing Me!”

No, not me, but a colleague of mine.

Seems that the product was shipped and failed to meet expectations. In fact, the product was dead, due to an series of delays in the shipping service.

That Happens

What happened next is not normal, or abnormal, if you prefer.

My colleague’s client waited a year then sent an email reminding colleague that the shipment was (literally) dead-on-arrival.

Why wait a year?

Why bring the issue up again? Colleague said she was sorry, offered a refund, a fresh shipment etc.

No wait! There’s more!!

Colleague’s Client took care to point out the they are now letting everyone they know (church, friends, school etc) that colleague takes the money then ships dead products.

“Don’t worry” I tell my colleague.

“There’s one in every crowd”.

Every now and then you’ll run up against someone who is never happy unless they are both miserable and trying to make everyone around them (church, friends, school etc) miserable.

The good news is that everyone around them (church, friends, school etc) already knows that Griselda is a whiner, 100% negative, unforgiving, resentful, spiteful.

Griselda’s Grizzles will be shed like water off the proverbial duck’s back.

P.S.

Come to think of it, Griselda is probably doing my colleague a favor by spreading the word; 50% of the people she tells will think “Griselda is always so wrong and negative; this supplier might just be good! I’ll go take a look at the web site …”.

Talk to Me!

Cell Phone for Freebie

Rick needs help with his system, and he phoned me.

He will buy himself an external drive and download RoboCopy and install that then run it to mass-copy everything from his failing hard drive to his new 2.3TB external.

I’m glad, because too many people leave the backup until “After I’ve tidied up the hard drive a bit”, and the hard drive fails terminally while they are tidying up.

I’m SO pleased that I’ve told him I’ll have my cell phone with me tonight when I go up the street to fix Betty’s TV.

Why am I on call for a freebie?

Why not?

It defines my level of service, plus chances are Rick won’t call anyway.

But it will make an impression on him, and he’ll remember that, and talk about it.

P.S.

Rick did call me around 9:30 p.m. while I was adjusting Betty’s TV, and over the phone we wrote a little batch file and he saw it start to run, and learned how to adapt it, so life just got better!

Talk to Me!

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!

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!

Staying Ahead of the Avalanche - 3

Well! This feels good.

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

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 !

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 !

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 !

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?

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.

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 !

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 !

Who Calls Who?

ME> Hi Victor. What's a good time to call you back (after 2 p.m.)?

HE> I’ll be in the office Thursday morning at 10 a.m.

Gone are the days when the third email would be from Me to He, with Me saying “OK, why don’t you call me at a time convenient to you after 10 a.m.

I have learned that, all too often, something crops up at HIS end and he doesn’t make the call.

So now I initiate the call; that means we have a conversation AND the project moves a step further ahead.

Today!

Talk to Me!

Dating My Clients

So there I am, minding my own business, wading through 15 contacts per day playing catch-up, and I notice that a record has dropped through the cracks!

I maintain three date fields in a person’s record:

(1) The date the record was added

(2) The date the record was last modified

(3) The date the person is due for a follow-up call

In several cases one or more of these fields are null.

A null date field means that the record may not show up when I ask to see “Which records are due for follow-up today?” or “Which records have not been modified (with new information) for the longest time?”.

So I took 15 minutes off work and drafted a bit of code which ran thus:

If the date-last-modified field is null, then set it to be TODAY less 6 months ago. That ism make it instantly-very-stale, forcing me to look at it closely on the next contacts run (tomorrow morning)

If the date-added is null, then set it to the date-last-modified. By the first piece of code, date-last-modified is never null, so date-added will be set, at worst, the most recent date of modification. Not perfect, but at least it is a value.

If the date-to-follow-up is null, then set it to be the date-added. That should force me to look at records which are added BUT might never have been contacted!

In many cases I’ll find that everything is on schedule, but in some cases I’ll find a person who has never been contacted, and I’ll rectify that immediately.

It worked so smoothly that I repeated the procedure for my “Company” and “Branch” tables!

Talk to Me!

Staying Ahead of the Avalanche

There’s no other way to describe it, unless it’s ‘”Trying to make it to the beach before the huge surf wave dumps me”.

When I rose this morning my little contacts database told me that there were 14 contacts required “touching” today, and a further 102 were in the backlog.

My plan for touching a contact every 2 months is failing; I can’t keep up with the workload.

Why Not?

Management Measures.

It’s time for some figures.

I explore the database and check the Date-Last-Modified field on the personal records.

The earliest Date-Last-Modified is May 18^th this year. That’s 17 weeks back, as I compose this draft.

I have 340 personal contacts on this list.

That’s above my goal of two years ago, which I had pegged at 300.

It seems that I’ve been able to maintain a steady rate of 340/17=20 contacts per week.

That’s certainly not ten per day, and most of these, recently, have been straightforward mailings.

If I tabulate the count of contacts-per-week against the week number I see this:

Wk	Ct
1	8
2	10
3	12
4	1
5	1
7	24
8	55
9	41
10	24
11	9
13	35
14	25
15	28
16	57
17	9

I Work in Spurts

Over the past 4 weeks I’ve contacted 35, 25, 28 and 57 people respectively. An average of 36.

The other spurt averaged 36 contacts per week, too.

My running average over the period works out to 23 per week; better than 17, but “Christopher can do better”, as my school report card said.

It seems that 35, or even 40 contacts per week ought to be doable.

If I make 40 contacts per week over 340 contacts, that means I’ll make contact once every 8.5 weeks, which ought to be about right.

In other words, my number of contacts is correct, and my goal of touching each one about once every 2 months is correct.

A New Goal

I just need to be more diligent in reaching my goals each day.

A running average of 23 per week is 4 per business day.

I need to double that to 8 per day.

Aiming for ten is a good idea, a doable stretch.

Catching Up

In the meantime, I need to catch up, to give myself breathing space while aiming for my goal.

I can do that by temporarily stretching my next-contact-date button from 2 months to 3 months.

To Justify that I HAVE to see at least 10, but preferably, 15 ENVELOPES waiting to be mailed out at the end of each business day.

P.S. So, obviously, I should drop ten, or fifteen blank envelopes near the printer each morning and churn out postals until the day’s supply is gone.

Talk to Me!

How Many can You Follow?

If you’ve been following my saga on Twitter you will know that I’ve been puzzled about the vast numbers of people who follow me for no apparent reason, and the number of people I follow, for reasons that escape me after a month or two.

There are people I keenly want to follow, tweeps on whose every word I hang, but too often they get swamped out by a burst of activity from others who I’m following.

And how on earth did I end up following “BeerGuy”?

So I’ve Made an Executive Decision

Right now I’m following 50 tweeps.

That’s too many.

I will reduce that number by ONE at the start of each week, until I reach 40; then I’ll re-evaluate the situation.

Then I may reduce that number by ONE at the start of each week, until I reach 30; then I’ll re-evaluate the situation.

I rather think that following 30 tweeps; seriously following by being able to engage with them, is a commendable activity.

Trying to follow 300 is just plain stupid.

Talk to Me!