Promises and Threats

I’ve listened to a TVO podcast “ Moisés Naím: Metaphors Against Social Ills “, part of which discusses why wars fail, especially “war on drugs”, “war on poverty”, “war on Afghanistan” and so on; also a brief discussion on why clones of The Marshall Plan fail.

To me the discussion raised the interesting point about wars, and I’m fascinated because I study the origins of the Third Balkan War.

The Goal

The goal of war is victory (I’m also strong on Goals!), and so entering into a war is done in the belief, not the hope, that victory will be gained.

If I declare War on Weight in an effort to trim a few pounds of flab from my waist, I do so believing that I can shed 10 pounds over the next 6 months, and keep them off.

If I win, well, good! We are all happy.

But if I lose, it is very easy to segue into War on Ill-Health, and publish how I have changed my diet to eat healthy foods, diverting attention away from the fact that I’m not losing weight at all.

The War on Terror whose aim was to capture Obama bin Laden has turned into a war to reconstruct Afghanistan Society.

Gambling

Which leads me to believe that one should never gamble on war; one should not go to war on anything or against anyone unless one is 100% sure of winning; because failure to win means we get held up and ridiculed, making the next battle more difficult.

Which brings me back to my headline. In the early 1970s I learned “Never make a promise or a threat you’re not prepared to keep”, a sound basis for any business negotiation.

I should not threaten to walk away from a business deal unless I know that I can survive without that deal being consummated.

I should never promise to deliver goods or services unless I know I already have those goods or services in hand.

Talk to Me !

Promises and Threats

I’ve listened to a TVO podcast “ Moisés Naím: Metaphors Against Social Ills “, part of which discusses why wars fail, especially “war on drugs”, “war on poverty”, “war on Afghanistan” and so on; also a brief discussion on why clones of The Marshall Plan fail.

To me the discussion raised the interesting point about wars, and I’m fascinated because I study the origins of the Third Balkan War.

The Goal

The goal of war is victory (I’m also strong on Goals!), and so entering into a war is done in the belief, not the hope, that victory will be gained.

If I declare War on Weight in an effort to trim a few pounds of flab from my waist, I do so believing that I can shed 10 pounds over the next 6 months, and keep them off.

If I win, well, good! We are all happy.

But if I lose, it is very easy to segue into War on Ill-Health, and publish how I have changed my diet to eat healthy foods, diverting attention away from the fact that I’m not losing weight at all.

The War on Terror whose aim was to capture Obama bin Laden has turned into a war to reconstruct Afghanistan Society.

Gambling

Which leads me to believe that one should never gamble on war; one should not go to war on anything or against anyone unless one is 100% sure of winning; because failure to win means we get held up and ridiculed, making the next battle more difficult.

Which brings me back to my headline. In the early 1970s I learned “Never make a promise or a threat you’re not prepared to keep”, a sound basis for any business negotiation.

I should not threaten to walk away from a business deal unless I know that I can survive without that deal being consummated.

I should never promise to deliver goods or services unless I know I already have those goods or services in hand.

Talk to Me !

What’s the Difference Between …?

… a Prospect and an Investor?

None whatsoever, as far as I can see.

In both cases you are working to convince someone to part with some money UP FRONT, to bet on your ideas, service or product.

A recent itBusiness.ca article “ Why elevator pitches don't work with investors ” brings this home.

“The problem with elevator pitches is than no investor cares what you do,” said Mothersill. “It’s not that you’ve built a better mousetrap – it’s what pain does that mouse trap solve in the marketplace and whether or not there’s a buyer for it.”

So true of your clients.

“Investors want to make sure that their money will be secure and that they will get a profit out of their investment,”

So true of your clients.

“Twelve items that should be included in the presentation document are: …”

So true of your clients.

Talk to Me !

It’s Happened Again

I got a call from a long-time client two weeks ago, a question about security.

I assembled a few pages of notes (“ Security of Files ”) and emailed the link within 20 minutes of our phone call.

“There you go, Bruce. Please let me know if this was any use to you.“.

Two weeks pass and I hear nothing; not even a short ‘Thanks I’ll take a look”.

So I called back first thing Monday morning. (I call this a limbering-up call) and asked.

He has to look through his voluminous email Inbox folder to find it.

“Oh! There it is. Yeah. Hmmm!”.

He hadn’t seen it and hadn’t read it, and …

The message to me is clear.

When someone calls with a problem and I email the solution to them, I ought to phone them the next business day to remind them that there’s an email in their box.

Because too many people treat their Inbox as an insurmountable problem.

Talk to Me !

I’m Under Stress

No wonder my blood pressure is high.

Apart from wandering the face of this planet, I have auxiliary matters of contention.

This morning I rose at 4 a.m. (not unusual for me), rebooted the computer and walked away.

The first re-boot of the day triggers all sorts of useful tasks, including flushing the browser cache, initiating a run of The Prospector to scour yesterday’s CNW press releases , fires up my weight-monitoring spreadsheet and a host of other things. While it is doing that I wander into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee and cater to the cat’s bowls.

Of course, the very first thing the reboot does is to load TrueCrypt and decrypt the encrypted hard drive which holds all the data.

Except this morning it didn’t.

TrueCrypt Just Hung There.

20 minutes had passed before I noticed this, so I rebooted; a little glitch is all; an experiment by the cosmos.

The machine wouldn’t reboot, so I did the old lean-on-the-power-button trick to force a shut-down and then powered up again for a clean reboot of the day.

Nada.

TrueCrypt Just Hung There.

Without a decrypted hard drive all I have is an encrypted hard drive.

Shut-down, Power-on.

TrueCrypt Just Hung There.

Shut-down, Power-on. Panic.

Well! To make a short story long (there follows 2,000 words of technical gibberish) it turned out to be a hang caused by a blank ready-to-burn-songs CD that I’d popped in the DVD burner yesterday and never got around to burning.

Puts all the device numbers out of whack.

Confuses TrueCrypt.

Which doesn’t tell me “Hey! You’ve got an extra drive here”; it just sulks.

While my panic sets in.

My last job each evening is to backup all computers to twin external drives, so on paper we’re alright. Except I wasn’t looking forward to reloading some 60 GB of stuff from an external drive.

That would put a crimp in my morning.

Oh well, let’s get on with the day. 60 minutes down the tubes …

Talk to Me !

Life Has Its Moments

… and the other day was one of them.

Down to The Montreal Deli for lunch for two:-

Check the docket number.

“33333”.

What are the odds?

I show it to George-The-Manager and ask him if this qualifies me for a free meal.

George is busy on the phone so all he can do is grimace and nod and give me a thumbs up.

It beats Tim Horton’s Roll-up-the-Rim-to-Win !

Talk to Me !

Management Measures - Spatial

Yesterday I got into an argument (nothing unusual there) about the United States of America.

I claimed that their land-level border problems were immense. My friend claimed no-big-deal – “Just two borders, right? Mexico and Canada”.

I just KNEW that I was right; I also believed that the USA wasn’t handling its problems very well, on several fronts, but that’s another matter.

This morning I pulled out one of my trusty atlases and did some research.

But don’t YOU do that

You close your eyes and ask this question:

How many of the states of the USA have a land-crossing border problem, and by “border problem” I mean “Need to monitor a border that would permit inflow of illegal immigrants.

If you can’t do that, try a simpler question: “Does the USA have more than 50%, or does it have less than 50% of its states with Customs & immigration booths and officers?”

The answer is here , but don’t click until you’ve given this problem a fair shake.

Note that every US state has customs & immigration bureaus – for airplane arrivals.

I’m talking here about land-level borde-crossings – on foot, by car, bus, train or bike.

Talk to Me !

Fame And Fortune

I have just heard The Beatles singing “Fool On The Hill”, strictly speaking I have just heard a recording of The Beatles singing “Fool On The Hill”.

Nice song. Part of my youth. I was in late high school when The Beatles took the world by storm.

I found myself wondering which of the Fab Four were doing vocals. There are only two left alive.

I found myself wondering if the two survivors, on hearing a Beatles song playing, think back to the day that song was recorded, what they had for lunch, what they were wearing, and so on.

I contemplated that, perhaps, they didn’t listen to The Beatles. After 50 years, maybe you’ve heard enough. Maybe they listen to Lyle Lovett or someone else.

Then I wondered how galling it might be to be walking through a shopping mall and hear your own voice coming through a set of tinny speakers twenty feet above your head.

How Galling!

I think that if I were that famous and was forced to listen to my glory of 50 years ago for the rest-of-my-life, I’d go bonkers.

So I’m glad I don’t have that kind of fame.

I could use a bit of fame, but not that much.

A small fortune would come in handy, too.

Talk to Me !

DIY Projects

I read in the Toronto star “ Baeumler: The best job in the world ”.

Another memorable quote “If you’re planning on learning as you go, plan on spending 50 per cent more time and 30 per cent more money on materials until you come around the learning curve.”.

This is true of home renovations, writing macros, building web pages, rotating your tyres, mastering basic WordPress or MailChimp , and frankly, I think the 50% is low.

Talk to Me !

Going Over Budget

I just had another great business meeting with young David Sappleton of Xcite Creative and then came home to read in the Toronto star “ Baeumler: The best job in the world ”.

David and I discussed projects; we work in different fields, but suffer the same penalties of clients accepting the product and then saying “Could you color it blue add another wheel to the left-hand side?”, which eats into our already-slender profit margin.

And we discussed ways to over come this problem; tightening the specifications doesn’t always do the trick.

I have tried proposing a fixed-price for the job, then hourly rate any time AFTER two weeks following delivery; if nothing else that tells the client to test the product quickly, not to wait 3 months before coming back to me.

The Star article includes this memorable line “… put away at least 15 to 20 per cent for contingencies …”.

That made me think.

I could issue a proposal for a fixed-price job, and then add (to the quoted value) 15% and mark that “contingencies”.

The message to the client is clear: I can do the job for $5,000, but we both know (don’t we?) that the unexpected crops up. Let us BOTH allow for that.

My message is clear: If nothing extra crops up (or if the client decides to say nothing crops up), then you pay the $5,000. But be aware that you ought to be prepared to pay up to $5,750 if part-way through the job your situation changes.

That way there are no unpleasant surprises.

Talk to Me !

Strike up a Conversation

I stare out my window, looking towards the clouds scudding in from the south-west, and the Toronto Star headline reads “ Florida dealership will pay for your new car if it rains April 8 ”.

The details are hazy (Good one, Chris!), but you buy the car now and get your money back if it rains April 8. The article says the dealer made the decision “without a smidgen of complicated risk-assessment”, but I don’t believe that.

Still an all, the killer statement is buried at the foot of the report:-

“In our market, it seems to work better to get customers to strike up a conversation rather than screaming at us.”

I’ll come back to that in a minute

I am reading Neil Rackham’s “SPIN Selling” – SPIN as in Situation questions, Problem questions, Implication questions, Need-payoff questions.

Neil discusses the traditional sales training of Preliminaries, Investigating, Demonstrating capability and Obtaining commitment, that last being known as "closing” or “getting the order”.

Neil makes a good point that the sales process for small-ticket items has to be different from that of large-ticket items. He gives little thought to grabbing a $15 pocket knife at a display stand; it’s a token amount and a bad decision affects only him. No need for any kind of sales talk there. But a $3,000 computer system affects the entire office, so that needs a different sales cycle.

Most of us are selling large-ticket items – training sessions for $3,000, web sites for $2,500. If someone asks for an hour’s coaching, well, it’s about $150. I can wing that, but a 3-day tour-de-force for 8 staff members means WE had better have our ducks in a row.

Back to Florida

In both situations I learn that it’s the relationship, the conversation I have to develop.

I think the conclusion is that if I continue to work hard on educating my contacts (about me) and offer them tidbits of useful information on a regular basis, the sale will come quite naturally.

The client will have decided to buy before they approach me; the only question is, “What color would you like it?”.

Talk to Me !

It’s a People Problem

• “Can you merge these seven workbooks for us?”
• “Can you merge these three contact lists for us”?”
• “Did he really score a goal?”.

The Guardian article scores a hit with "In principle the iview system can also solve specific goal-line issues, but the main reason it wasn't used in the World Cup was the approval of the governing bodies rather than the technology itself.".

We all knew that it wasn’t a bouncing tyre that killed the woman .

In the trade we quietly mutter “It’s a people problem; it’s always a people problem”.

At the root level it is never a technological problem. Cars don’t think. Spreadsheets don’t think. Footballs and goalposts don’t have brains.

It’s a depressing thought that all human problems in the world today can be laid at the feet of humans.

It’s an encouraging thought that I might be one of the humans able to solve human problems.

Talk to Me !

How Computers Boot Up

I came across two excellent articles recently and am posting a short commentary on them here and at Motherboard Chipsets and the Memory Map.

The first article should be of general interest to anyone who sits waiting for the computer to re-boot, or anyone who hates the process so much that they avoid a re-boot as much as possible.

This stuff is of interest to me in part because the first computers I ever used, in 1967, were bootstrapped – you pressed a button on the card-reader which caused the machine to read the first punched-card in a deck of 80-column cards, which card contained enough instructions to read the next card, and so on, until the whole program was loaded and ready to process data.

You’ll read this in “Things start rolling when you press the power button on the compute”, under the heading Boot Sequence, Boot being an abbreviation for Bootstrap, and nothing at all to do with giving the computer a kick.

In 1973-74 I was enrolled in a Systems course, part of which was to design computers from the DEC handbook – working out how to combine NAND, NOR and NOT gates into half-adder circuits and then continue upwards, and as a pastime I wrote a compiler for a computer with only one instruction .

Anyway, give the Duartes paper a single read-through; don’t be thwarted by some of the stuff you don’t understand; just skim through it and then say “Whew! I never realized how complex a device these things are”.

Much more complex than a vacuum-cleaner, even though it too has an on-off switch.

Talk to Me !

Motherboard Chipsets and the Memory Map

I came across two excellent articles recently and am posting a short commentary on them here and at How Computers Boot Up .

This article is probably a little harder to digest than the boot-up article, but still and all it may be of interest to you, as much as when the salesman pops the hood of your new car and you go “Ok. Boring!”.

When you look at the diagram, you can think of the arrow-lines as wires connecting the bits and pieces.

“ … the CPU doesn’t really know anything about what it’s connected to.” Is ever so true. It’s just as true of computers. I spend hours listening to clients talk about their data (and they need to describe it to me so I can build a process), but I know that the computer doesn’t have a clue about dollars or names or temperatures – it’s just data, strings of characters or chunks of numbers. And in the end, of course, 1s and 0s, but not even that, it is plus-or-minus voltages, when you come down to it.

And even then the computer doesn’t understand anything. It’s just a wired-together collection of transistors, right?

Talk to Me !

Getting the Word Out – Tapping Into Client Pools

I think the official umbrella name is “Reciprocal Marketing”, although my thoughts are a one-way street here.

I need to get the word out about my training courses. The material is ready, the room is available. I’m ready. Where are the customers?

I know the customers are out there, and that they are already doing some other form of business with someone known to me.

For example, Gary, not his real name, appears to be running a pretty successful financial consulting business. I suspect he has a hundred or so hot name son his list, existing clients, previous clients, ready-to-become clients.

I can approach Gary with this deal:

You pay the room rental costs and I’ll deliver a 3-hour training session to 8 of your contacts for free.

You will look good because you are giving them a bonus (Please see Oranges and Bottled Water ).

Your clients will feel good because they are learning something productively useful for free (plus doing a little bit of networking).

I’ll feel good because I’ll get my name, material, knowledge and techniques out there on display.

Talk to Me !

Can You Keep a Secret?

It’s OK.

I know you can.

But should you?

And when should you pass on a secret?

You know something the rest of us don’t know; that’s what you are selling – the brew made from your secret recipe, the experience locked inside your head, the special tricks and methods you’ve discovered.

Whatever it is, you’ve got it, and no one else has it; that’s your niche.

And here you are, mug of coffee in hand, being asked by your prospect “So, what’s your secret? How do you do it?”.

Should you tell them?

Of course you should.

It won’t take more than a minute, will it? Probably less than 30 seconds.

And how in the name of all that’s proprietary can you possibly give away the fullness of your secret in 30 seconds? You can’t. There’s no way a rookie prospect is going to take your overview and build a space shuttle from it, let alone the support system for the space shuttle.

Case in point: I know all about Microsoft Word’s styles – both paragraph and character. A prospect asks me how I’m going to achieve consistent formatting to brand their product.

“Easy!”, I say, “I’ll implement a hierarchy of styles”.

What can they do? Read the Microsoft Word help screens? Buy a book for $20 and become an expert in building style hierarchies overnight? I don’t think so.

How will they know which way to organize the hierarchy (there are as many ways as there are people in the office).

Do they really want to delve into the differences between Paragraph Styles and Character Styles? And why, at certain times, Paragraph Styles act as Character Styles?

Do you think they’ll discover fractional point font sizes, and how to craft a macro to make use of this in page alignment?

And so on.

I doubt it.

In fact, by replying to their question with just one word (triumphantly) “STYLES!”, there’s a good chance that they’ll be so overwhelmed with what’s out there that they’ll turn the whole exercise over to me. Instantly.

And how about you? What is your secret? And don’t you find it difficult to encapsulate it into a 30-second elevator speech?

I thought so!

Talk to Me !

I Will Pass on this Info

Sometimes the response both amazes and alarms me.

I issued a short email to a colleague announcing a new course I’ve produced.

My esteemed colleague’s response was short and to the point:

Hi Chris, I will pass on this info. Thanks

Now I know this chap well, and I know he means well, and I know that he means “I will let other people know about this resource”, and all is good.

But for just a fleeting instant panic reared its ugly head: What if he means “Thanks, but No Thanks; I don’t need this kind of information”?

I need a vacation ….

Talk to Me !

To Call, or Not to Call? That is the Email!

I have invested many hours (perhaps too many) in developing a sale here in Toronto. Then my contact passes me on to another member of the same firm but in Ottawa, with the words “Jackie will get in touch with you”.

I respond with thanks, “I’ll wait for her to contact me”, in part because I don’t want to seem too eager or pushy, and in part because I want to know that she wants it enough to call me.

Here’s the catch: She didn’t call!

Now I AM eager; I want to meet my sales quota this month (even if it is only one sale), so I brace myself and send off a short eMail “nudge”:

Hello Jackie, I just tried to reach you by phone but the line got dropped. I was calling to ask if you were anticipating anything from me. A week ago Harold indicated that you might contact me, but in case you were waiting to hear from me, well, here is an email! I spent a bit of time on a proof-of-concept model for Harold and uploaded a couple of videos which might be of interest to you:-

Her response?

Hello Chris and thank you for your e-mail. I have forwarded your documentation to a colleague of mine. After watching your videos focusing on a section of a document, and to have a better understanding of what a complete processing entails, would you happen to have a demo illustrating a document being completely processed with such a tool and what it looks like at the “end” ? We were also wondering about the following: - What type of format is used as the “desired situation” ? - How would it work if we were to attempt to use such a tool in different languages? Thank you in advance. Your assistance is appreciated.

From which I gather that

(1) I should be a little more forward in presenting myself; the shy wall-flower type gets to dance, but not as often as the flirt.

(2) In Maybe You’re 65 I quoted CopyBlogger as saying “those customers really want your product”. Spot On!

(3) These contacts are busy people, but they are busy responding to other people. I can be one of those other people.

Talk to Me !

Don’t Worry! Nothing has Changed.

SmallBiz Trends asks “Have We Lost a Generation of Small Business Owners?” and then answers its own question with some raw figures and a chart, on the grounds that if you can’t understand “We’re down more than 1.1 million” you’ll understand “{insert chart here}”.

They claim to be talking about “fewer self-employed Americans” but closer inspection reveals they really want to talk about “fewer incorporated self-employed people”.

There’s a world of difference.

As a man of the world I am painfully aware of the number of small businesses, one-man-shows, who charge cash for fixing everything from roofs to driveways, fingernails to toe-nails, and will walk your dog, or your granny, for a wad of twenty-dollar banknotes.

I don’t think there are less self-employed; I think that there are more self-employed .

And I think they are coming from the old-fashioned regular-salary crowd, tired of paying taxes, and from the newly-retired-at-55 crowd, who aren’t satisfied with their pensions.

And me?

My accountant told me twenty years ago – if you get paid in cash, go straight to the ATM, deposit it, and write the client’s name on the slip. Once you get home, print out an invoice and mail it.

That way, he said, you will never fear the police, tax inspectors, or anyone else.

He was right, as usual.

Talk to Me !

More Elevator Speeches

A correspondent writes:

In my Textual Intervention class last year, we had to explore writing personal ads. The first one was required to be straight. I came up with:

• Australian male, 34, enjoys silence and solitude, and cool, sunny afternoons reading old books. Is there a mid-thirties Christian woman who would complement me?

Then we had to write an alternative based on the original, so I wrote:

• Apparently self-centered Christian man seeks woman to wait patiently while he finishes the chapter. Must love cats.

Finally, we had to write an anti-personal ad (whatever that means). I settled on:

• Damaged goods will never trust another woman as long as he lives. Will reject as similarly damaged any woman who finds herself attracted to him.

No ad is longer than 32 words.

I gingerly put my toes in the water and came up with:

Tri-national male, 64, enjoys quiet music, conversation, and if that fails, reading old books. Is there a 60s woman from the 60s who would accompany me?

Easily-bored atheist seeks partner who will trigger his brain and listen to the results. Must hate spending money.

Self-centered brain seeks fuel to keep the furnaces going. Is not interested in dining-out every night. Respondent must own a car.

Come on, give it a shot (you can lie a little)

Then trying writing a Personal Ad for your business.

Date Me !

6 Orion Street, Southern Cross, WA 6426

A weakness of mine is to use Google Alerts. A sub-weakness is to use Google Alerts to keep track of my past.

So up pops a hit from “ southern cross yilgarn ”

I spent my first two nights in Southern Cross, back in June 1956, in that hotel.

For roughly $cdn1.5M I could quit my day job and run a hotel.

I was struck by the phrase “Only a full inspection will do justice to your consideration” because that’s exactly how I feel about me when discussing my products and services – if only the prospect would take a sample or a trial run, they’d see just how good I/it am/is, and then they’d buy the whole deal.

Now, how to translate “Only a full inspection will do justice to your consideration” into “Why not invite me in for a chat?”.

Talk to Me !

"Orion Street"? Yes. In Southern Cross, named after the constellation, the streets are named after stars and constellations.

My eLetter – 1st Issue

The first issue went out two days ago to a humble (small mailing list) start.

22 months have passed since first I said “I should issue a monthly newsletter”, and I regret the delay.

Where did the time go?

I think it was dissipated by fear; fear of getting started, fear of rejection, fear of poor quality, and fear of fearing fears.

In the end – SO WHAT?

Out it went, issue number 1, with eleven more issues in the pipeline – articles written – and it’s me, all me.

I figure of course, that those who subscribe will want to hear about ME and won’t care overmuch about the precise RGB code for the background of the thing.

My smartest decision – I think to use a service rather than roll-my-own. I used MailChimp and could have picked one of about a dozen candidates.

I could have started the thing 18 months ago – lord knows I have enough material to sink a public service building – and for 18 months I could have been telling people about it, building up a subscriber base.

Oh well.

They say better late than never, and today I have to start tweaking next month’s issue.

Talk to Me !

My eLetter – 1st Issue

The first issue went out two days ago to a humble (small mailing list) start.

22 months have passed since first I said “I should issue a monthly newsletter”, and I regret the delay.

Where did the time go?

I think it was dissipated by fear; fear of getting started, fear of rejection, fear of poor quality, and fear of fearing fears.

In the end – SO WHAT?

Out it went, issue number 1, with eleven more issues in the pipeline – articles written – and it’s me, all me.

I figure of course, that those who subscribe will want to hear about ME and won’t care overmuch about the precise RGB code for the background of the thing.

My smartest decision – I think to use a service rather than roll-my-own. I used MailChimp and could have picked one of about a dozen candidates.

I could have started the thing 18 months ago – lord knows I have enough material to sink a public service building – and for 18 months I could have been telling people about it, building up a subscriber base.

Oh well.

They say better late than never, and today I have to start tweaking next month’s issue.

Talk to Me !

Start Your Christmas Letter NOW!

I should talk. I still am not finished mailing out my 2010 Christmas letters.

Mainly because I haven’t cleared a space on the table, finished checking my map collection and so on. Truth is, I haven’t set aside the time to do it.

But what about next December? Will I have two corporate letters ready-to-go-to-print?

You betcha!

So can you.

Here’s how

• Fire up your favorite word processor.
• Save a new document as Christmas2011.doc
• Create a two-column table.
• In the left-hand column place the months January through December.
• In the right-hand column write one short paragraph for each of the past months – January, February, March.
• Save and close your document.

You are looking for the most significant commercial and personal event in the month. (One event for each newsletter).

During the current month, when something significant happens, load it into the right-hand cell for the current month (or contemplate replacing what seemed momentous four days ago).

And don’t worry; at the end of the year much of this will seem trivial in retrospect because you have issued lost of newsletters, blogged lots of items, made lots of lunches, gone on many trips since then. But to your readers the initial event will be as fresh as your Christmas letter in their hands.

Talk to Me !

Learning from My Peers

This may come as a surprise to you, but I am not the most experienced in the bunch, nor always the brightest.

I just got off the phone with Julia Wooster of Prime Admin Solutions again, and we agreed to exchange emails.

I noticed this at the foot of her email:

I said to my self, “Self”, I said, “Why don’t I have my Twitter and LinkedIn URLs in my email signature?”

So now I do.

Thanks Julia!

You’re a great incremental coach.

Talk to Me !

3 Easy Lessons

Down at the foot of the article “ How I cut my credit card rate in half ” I read:-

There are three lessons here.

The first is if you don't ask you'll never find out what you can get.

The second is that just because you ask you don't always get what you want. In this case, I figure I still came out ahead because I got rid of a high-interest card and have a new one with a lower rate.

The third is that I will now be shopping around for a card that offers low interest rates and high benefits.

The first two lessons are somewhat familiar to us. As entrepreneurs – no different from Lawyers and Print Shops – we are somehow reluctant to ask for a deposit up front. But when we do ask we are surprised when the client says “OK”. I regularly stipulate a 50% deposit on every proposal that goes out now.

The third lesson was more interesting to me.

Once – again as entrepreneurs - we have had the experience of asking for compensation, we learn that it’s OK to ask for other things, too.

For years my policy has been that I do not charge for travel within the boundaries of Toronto and Mississauga. (TTC and Mississauga Transit). My home office is smack on the border between the two cities, so both cities are adjacent to me.

Recently I’ve decided to ask for travel costs – a one-hour-each-way fixed rate – for any part-day assignment.

You want a ½ day’s training? Sure. $550. Plus travel costs.

And what if the client negotiates a not-travel-cost deal? Then I still place the travel item on the invoice, but set it at zero.

No harm in reminding the client that they got a good deal.

Talk to Me !

What Your Client is Thinking

You run the city’s top Animal Medical Hospital, a 24-hour emergency clinic. Vets refer their own clients to you on the weekends. Pristine, efficient, modern equipment, the entire staff fully qualified and they care about humans more than they care about their passion in life – the well-being of pets.

The client arrives with a cat-basket from which emit pitiful howls. Agony for everyone, especially the articulate.

After a 5-minute examination you present the printed estimate for $2,100 which is a fair and honest estimate; you are in business and it costs a whack to set this place up and maintain a near-100% success rate. The client knows this.

Now if the client has $2,100 (or more – say $5,000) cash sitting in their personal account, they will pay. If they have less than $2,100, say $500, they will come to a (literally for you all) painful decision.

Let’s introduce a factor of 10. Suppose the estimate came to $210. The client would pay. Suppose the estimate came to $21,000 (some do come to that!). The client would walk away.

It’s not the absolute amount of the estimate that counts – you arrived at the factor after due diligence and a flawless addition of detailed and documented components. It’s where the estimate sits on the client’s number-line.

Now let’s suppose that the client has unlimited funds (for example, $5,000,000 sitting in their personal account) and make the estimate $210,000 or even $2,100,000. Still the client walks away. Only this time it’s not about where the estimate sits on their number line (anyone with $5,000,000 in their personal account can liquidate a downtown office tower tomorrow morning and raise an additional billion or so), this time it’s about the client’s sense of reality.

No matter how much you love your cat, no pet cat is worth $210,000 (unless you are buying life insurance, of course).

In every case your estimate is fair and accurate.

In all cases the client has a number line.

The one redeeming feature that might let you cover your absolutely basic costs is that the client expects at the very least to pay a basic consultation fee just for walking in the door, say $150. You’ll get your $150.

And if the client decides to terminate the pet relationship (a most difficult decision by the way), you’ll make a small profit on the $390 euthanasia service.

Talk to Me !

Expires July 8, 2011

I read with interest a paper titled “ Email DNSBL Best Practise ”; don’t sweat the spelling, it is an international open-source effort that reduces the volume of spam in your mail box, and mine.

A header/footer text that read “Expires July 8, 2011“ caught my eye.

For the past 15 years every MS-Word document I produce has been pre-loaded with a default header/footer that includes as a minimum my phone number, the date/time of printing and a unique document number.

In the early days I had an idea that I would run a DMS on my system, but the need never rose above “interesting”.

I had not previously thought of including a “Best Use By” date on my documents, and why not?

A great deal of what I write is timeless (these blogs for example!); training material I wrote for Excel 5 and DOS Lotus -123 still holds true because it is all about application development, and that hasn’t changed since 1968.

Some of what I write will become dated quite quickly, especially when I am documenting some weird feature of a specific version of MS-Office, or perhaps this year’s plan to take over the world.

The “Best Use By” date is not meant to cover my ass in any legal dispute; it is there to caution the reader that the material MIGHT stale rather quickly, and my phone number is always available for a checkup.

Hmm!

Talk to Me !

Selecting Contacts

“Some Body has been named Director of Product Development in Canada”.

I have to be more selective with my contacts.

A recent news release announced the appointment of some one to a position in one of my target market forms – a large insurance company.

Now I can call Some Body and invite them out to lunch, but this is a way of working my way up the tree, and apart from “Congratulations”, what are we to use as a vehicle?

My plan to invite ONLY Presidents, CEOs and CFOs means that it could be a long while before I get a good hook on one of those via a press release for this major firm.

On the other hand, going with Some Body is likely to be just as time-consuming, without the guarantee of my getting there at all.

Talk to Me !

Statistics

Statistics has a bad rap.

I’m here to speak up for statistics and mathematics.

On February 22 2011 an earthquake rocked the city of Christchurch in New Zealand.

Early (24 hours) reports told of 65 dead. We know that figure may well rise as rubble is cleared.

Christchurch is the second-largest city in New Zealand .

The population of New Zealand is 4,315,800.

The population of the U.S.A. is 307,006,560

The U.S.A.’s second largest city is Los Angeles.

How would you feel if 4,624 people died in Los Angeles?

Do the math for your own country.

It isn’t difficult.

But it will help you put the New Zealand news in perspective.

(February 24 2011) The toll has risen to 98 , so …

think in terms of 7,000 dead in Los Angeles.

(February 25 2011) The toll has risen to 145 , so …

think in terms of 10,315 dead in Los Angeles.

Talk to Me !

There’s No Such Thing As Bad Weather …

… Just the Wrong Clothes.

OK, so I stole that from a TVO broadcast of the Billy Connoly trip around the top of Canada via the elusive North-West Passage .

His point is valid, and Australian friends and relatives have often enough asked me “How do you COPE in Toronto?”.

Truth is, I don’t like the winter weather; I grew up in the mirror image of San Diego and Borrego Springs . Nonetheless I dress warm, gloves, cap, scarf, and set off on a 10-minute trek to a friend’s house for supper, carrying the meal’s ingredients ( I love to cook ).

It struck me that the same could be said of my business contacts:

• There’s No Such Thing As Bad Clients – Just the Wrong Product.
• There’s No Such Thing As a Bad Sale – Just the Wrong Conversation.
• There’s No Such Thing As a Bad Prospect – Just the Wrong Hook.

I am sure you can continue paraphrasing whenever things go wrong in your business.

Talk to Me !

The Exit Interview

We generally associate an exit interview with a change of job; and a good thing it is, too.

But exit interviews take place whenever two humans part company. They occur for me on a regular basis every time I leave The Montreal Deli ; the waitresses bid me to return soon, and by that I know that I’m tipping them way too much.

My neighbor just had an exit interview with Jenny Craig; it did not go well. She went in to tell them she was going to wing it, thank you very much, after 3 months at $600/month for the JC food menu.

Quite right, too. You want to lose weight? Decide that you want to; tell someone you are going to do it, then eat smaller portions of better foods (i.e. non-packaged food). Take the stairs from time to time just for the hell of it.

Jenny Craig of course is not in the business of helping people lose weight; not at all. They are in the business of selling cheap food in cheap packages expensively. When someone quits The Program, JC’s revenue stream takes a hit.

My neighbor reports that her consultant was quite negative, “You’ll not lose any more weight once you leave us”. This is true, actually; anyone who has lost weight will tell you that it’s quite easy to lose weight at about a pound a week for the first three months; after that shedding a pound can take up to a month or more. Of course, you can’t go on losing weight at a pound a week for 200 weeks, can you?

The whole interview was sordid, to hear it told.

What a missed opportunity for JC, to wish my neighbor well, thank her for taking part in The program, smile, and “Here’s my card, don’t hesitate to get in touch, for any reason, at any time …”.

Instead my neighbor won’t recommend JC to anyone.

The same must hold true when someone decides that they don’t require my services, or that that they don’t require my services any more.

My job is to smile, say “Please don’t hesitate”, and put a positive spin on the whole thing.

• My door is always open for you.
• I’m always sitting by the phone.
• Waiting for your call.
• Love to hear from you.
• Anytime.

Talk to Me !

Your Personal Invitation to Lunch - Follow-up

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

I was out all day Monday delivering training; not a single voice-mail or email from my five invitations. Disappointing, but we are not done yet!

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

One no-thanks so far, by email. At least that one person responded; the other four have not done so yet.

“I really don’t think it makes sense for us to meet at this point. XXXXXXX has no money available for the kind of work that you do; I don’t think there is a fit and it would not be a worthwhile use of your time or mine.”

I erase one penciled-in date from my diary.

Then:

“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.”

Two turn-downs out of five; does this mean that three are still in the running?

Both the two turn-downs indicate a pre-supposition on their parts, one of the kind of work that I do, the other that I was selling training.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

A third not-quite-yet, also known as a “Continuation”. Not this day, let’s do it in April.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Two outstanding invitations; no reply. The dates were for tomorrow and Friday.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Well, there you go.

1. Two replied and said “No Thanks”.
2. One replied and said “Later”.
3. And two did not bother to reply. At all. In any way.

Given that this was an experiment to see if difficult-to-reach-by-phone could be reached by a personal invitation, the experiment was a success.

It has taught me (I think) that those contacts who are difficult to reach by phone are also difficult to motivate by personal letter-mail.

WHY they are difficult to reach is another question:-

• Perhaps they just can’t stand me.
• Perhaps they never visit their mail-box down in the basement.
• Perhaps they are just plain rude and their parents never taught them to be courteous.

But see also The Exit Interview

Regardless, it suggests to me that difficult-to-reach-by-phone translates quite easily into difficult-to-reach, and that difficult-to-reach-by-phone can be easily dropped as not-worth-my-time-and-effort.

Talk to Me !

Why You Need to Count to 3

Because you can only do one job at a time.

Not three.

Despite humans trying to mimic their higher-cousins, operating systems, by claiming “I’m Multi-tasking!”.

So I am no different from you. I function best, produce the most fastest when I can focus on one job and deal with it to completion.

That’s why this (Saturday) morning, feeling overwhelmed, I took 15 seconds to identify the 3 tasks in my overwhelming task stream that ought to be done.

Turns out they were:

1: Complete the draft of the Excel Application course

2: Set up MailChimp for my eLetter

3: Work on the Marketing Plan proposed by the brilliant Geoff Hewko

So it’s out with three manila folders, three hanging folders and three plastic tabs.

Three labels, and into each folder goes the collection of notes and items that have accumulated on my desk this past week.

Now my work desk sports 3 hanging folders; I will pick one, work on it, and then file any new notes back in the hanging folder and file it away in my “Projects” file cabinet drawer and start on the next task.

I might, this being a weekend, leave the 3 folders on the other desk so that I can pick which one I feel like working on.

This brings in yet another aspect of Goals, Objectives, Deliverables and Deadlines. Even for this weekend, a short time span, I need to set myself an attainable goal for each project BEFORE I open the folder.

Talk to Me !

What is Your Freebie?

I have just signed up for MailChimp to manage my new eLetter. The FREE MailChimp service.

If it works I might upgrade to a paid version.

I regularly use free software or free data sources.

Why not? Why pay for something that is genuinely free, especially if it comes from a professional organization.

But how do I reconcile that with my old-fashioned pay-for-what-you-use mentality?

I consider how much free advice I give out over the phone or in the technical forums, and that my Indexer is a free download (as are several other applications), and I don’t feel so bad.

I bet too that you make use of freebies.

Just out of interest, what freebies do you give away?

Talk to Me !

Why I Meet Face-to-Face

The basic reason is that I am old and old-fashioned. I can live with that, because I have to live with that.

A recent Robert Half survey “identified the top five technology etiquette breachers and gives advice to help workers avoid these labels”.

Surprise! Surprise! “5. The Conference Call Con. This multitasker pretends to pay attention during teleconferences but is so busy checking e-mail he has no clue what's being discussed.”.

I often wonder, when I’m chatting with you, whether you are doing the old cocktail-party chat (Uh-huh! You don’t say! I never knew that …) and checking email, or at least, trying to win at MS-Hearts.

When I meet face-to-face for 60 minutes, I get 60 minutes of undivided attention.

It’s true that there is often a 2-hour travel time added to the cost, but at the very least I know I have your attention and, presumably, you consider the matter important enough to invest your time in it too.

Talk to Me !

Nag Screen

Related to “ Why You Need to Count to 3 ” is the business of staying on track within the project.

If you find that you are easily distracted (as am I) you might want to try this little trick:

Create a list of the steps you need to take to complete today’s goal (not this week’s goal, but just for today).

Take a screen snapshot (PrtScr key on your keyboard)

Paste the clipboard into MSPaint

Save the MSPaint as a BMP file on your hard drive.

(Win7) Right-click on the desktop, choose Personalize, and browse to your saved screenshot

(WinXP) Right-click on the desktop, Properties, Desktop and choose your screen shot as the background.

If you have trouble following these steps, please Talk to Me !

Your Blogging Responsibility

If you host or moderate a blog with public access, you may want to read this Sack Goldblatt Mitchell article , from which “ … The defendants were not alleged to have been the authors of the defamatory posts, but rather moderators who had the ability to publish or delete the allegedly defamatory comments.”

As usual, for us, it’s not a question of who wins or loses – but the resources expended in making or denying these sorts of claims.

If you are a moderator, be aware of your responsibilities.

Especially if, like me, you have the ability to publish or delete comments.

Talk to Me !

Leaving The Office

Last night in conversation I was reminded of an encounter back in 1989, or even earlier.

For some reason, a fellow-consultant dropped in to visit me; we sat in the living-room and chatted.

During the conversation he told me that he did not leave his office without charging someone.

The gist was that he would discuss matters on the phone, sitting in his office, for free (presumably with some sort of time-limit), but that any thing that required his physical presence in another place, expressly, that required that his brain, eyes, hands and mouth were present, was important enough to warrant a fee.

I am considering implementing such a philosophy here, albeit twenty two years later.

If you are a consultant, then satisfying people with your physical presence suggests that your physical presence provides something that cannot be otherwise obtained.

And that suggests that you have something of real dollar value in you when you visit a client.

Talk to Me !

Help Desk/Technical Support

An interesting press release from Robert Half Technology “CIOs express optimism about second-quarter hiring” ( http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/March2011/10/c9538.html )

Under the heading “Skills in Demand” I read “… the greatest challenge in finding skilled IT professionals are help desk/technical support and database management, …”

Help Desk/Technical support is outsourced more and more to solo-entrepreneurs who have deep technical skills and can communicate and train over the phone.

Database management is a no-brainer: “A company is known by the data it keeps”.

Talk to Me !

Your Personal Invitation to Lunch

I have documented this as a technical paper on my web site.

As I work through my contacts list I come across people with whom I have had minimal contact in the past. I telephone them, they don’t pick up the phone (for whatever reason), and I log the date/time with “got vm” to indicate that I tried to contact them without success. I roll the record forward a few days.

After half a dozen successive failures at different times of the different days I begin to wonder if this is a worthwhile contact.

Perhaps they don’t want to talk with me, and ignoring the phone is the easiest way to deal with it; perhaps they spend all day in meetings elsewhere; perhaps they only respond to voice-mail messages.

I don’t know.

But I do know that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life dealing with a client, even a paying client, that I can’t reach by phone.

The time has come to drop them – or to escalate the campaign in one last burst of stellar energy.

INVITATIONS TO LUNCH is that burst of energy.

I had five records tagged for invitations over the past two weeks.

I have mailed off (Friday 5 p.m. collection) the five invitations; I used my custom postage stamps. The invitations will land on desks Monday morning.

Sadly I won’t be here Monday, so in an ironic twist THEY will have to leave a voice mail or send an email if they choose to respond.

I penciled each name into my diary on a separate day a month away; this minimizes the chance that they will already be booked for a lunch-time meeting that day.

If they respond positively, and I hope that they will, we will have something to talk about, for sure.

If they don’t, I won’t feel badly about dropping that specific person (but not the company) from my contact list). I will erase that penciled meeting from that date, freeing it up for people who I can reach by phone.

One other thing: I printed out a sheet bearing the five names and will monitor the impact of this trial campaign closely.

Talk to Me !

Maybe You’re 65, and Starting a Freelance Marketing Shop

Interesting post from CopyBlogger about rejection, or at least failure-to-impress.

“You know, those customers really want your product to be the one they’ve been looking for. They aren’t against you, they’re waiting for you to nail it, to solve their problem, so they can get on with their lives.”

It is worth reading no matter what your age, no matter how long you have been ramping up your SOLUTIONS.

Everyone you talk with is hoping that YOU will be the miracle they were looking for, that YOU will have the solution.

The original story is about casting directors and auditions, but now that I think about it, I’ve spent a great deal of my (single) life giving women the once-over, wondering if SHE will become the next Mrs. Greaves.

Not in a chauvinistic sense, I hope, but you too, don’t you hope that THIS interview will clinch the $100,000 contract? That THIS prospect will end up being the client-who-puts-you-on-retainer?

Truth is, they too are hoping that you will be the round peg that fits into the round hole!

Talk to Me !

8 Work-At-Home Pitfalls 5-8

The Toronto Star recently published an article whose title starts with a digit “8” and the prospect of a list always intrigues us, so we went to see what is was about.

I’m going to tackle each pitfall and suggest what you-the-general-manager might do to avoid the pitfall.

Yesterday – Pitfalls 1-4

5. Guests never seem to get it that you have work to do and when you are in the office you’re not playing solitaire. Recently, I had a visitor who loudly sang off key while I tried to work to a deadline.

If the guest is your pal Rick who you haven’t seen for two years, then the General Manager should be scheduling off-time for you so that you can spend time with Rick. If the guest is Gwendolyn who stays overnight each Tuesday to catch the opera films, then the General Manager needs to remind Gwendolyn that after 8am you are at work, and need a quiet atmosphere.

A guest who does not appreciate your situation ought not be invited back. That’s the General Manager’s job, too.

6. Credit is a problem. Banks still look askance at the self employed. I believe they have a secret, negative category for us, particularly those who work at home. Assets, sparkling credit score and low debt to income ratio be damned, the work-at-home crowd have a tough time getting things like a business related line of credit without pledging their first born.

If banks don’t appreciate your business, go chat with a credit union. Credit unions pay interest and bonuses, are staffed by friendly people (not clerks hanging in until retirement) and are flexible on loans.

Banks don’t have all the solutions to your problems. Banks are geared to the most-common-needs of the general public, and still have problems understanding someone who chooses not to work in a cubicle on the 23rd floor downtown.

7. Too many bosses! Everyone you do business with is a potential boss. Juggling them all is often a challenge. And you can’t make the excuse that a job will be late because a certain VP demanded your time.

The Gm again. Why are you juggling 8 projects? The General Manager doesn’t need to make excuses, either. This is the world of business.

Back in 1990 I had three clients who each wanted me full-time. I had all 3 discuss the situation between them, and they came up with a schedule that they could live with (until one project ended and we re-assigned my time).

Admittedly I started work at 5 am on the northern end of the city, then travelled 70 Km to a suburb for an 8:30 start there, then 50 Km for a 11am start, but I got to nudge each project along each day, and the clients were happy.

8. The kids hate it. When mine were in the tween and teen years they yearned to be latch key kids. How can you get into after school trouble if Mom is always there when you get off the school bus?

Tough One. I have no tweens living with me, but I do have a couple of cats, one called “BleatsALot” and one called “WouldBleatIfHe Didn’t”.

My General Manager recognizes the value of living creatures in my habitat, and lets me schedule time to be with the cats, to play, serve lunch. At 3pm we “cut grass” and they get a few blades of oat grass. At 9:30 “let’s Have TREATS!”, and so on.

It is your General Manager’s job to schedule arriving-home time as a 30-minute tea-break so that you have time to quiz the kids about, well, quizzes, change clothes, get them settled etc.

And yes I know that point 8 was written as a downer for the kids, but the principle is the same.

Talk to Me !

8 Work-At-Home Pitfalls 1-4

The Toronto Star recently published an article whose title starts with a digit “8” and the prospect of a list always intrigues us, so we went to see what is was about.

And we didn’t agree with all we saw their, and I don’t think the disagreement is a matter of shades-of-grey.

My overall take on this is that if you suffer from more than 3 of the 8 pitfalls listed here, then you are not exercising your role as a manager, and for those of us who are solo entrepreneurs, we maintain at least four baseball caps on top of the computer.

My caps are labeled Chris-the-marketer, Chris-the-sales, Chris-the-trainer, Chris-the-application-developer, then there’s the cameo appearance of Chris-the-accounts-receivable (rare nowadays since I insist on a 50% deposit for all jobs) and the omniscient Chris-the-General-Manager.

It’s the last guy I take to task.

One of the many jobs of Chris-the-General-Manager is to allocate time, set priorities, and come up with brilliant ideas such as unplugging the phone when it seems appropriate to do so.

With that in mind I’m going to tackle each pitfall and suggest what you-the-general-manager might do to avoid the pitfall.

1.The if-you’re-at-home-you-can’t-be-working effect. This can range from unwanted drop ins during prime work hours to family calling for lengthy chin wags. Once I had a friend appear with her two toddlers. She told me she’d lost her babysitter and needed emergency help to keep an appointment.

This is not a friend. A friend is someone who communicates well with you. A friend would phone up front, and a friend would understand that you are at work.

To me this reeks of the General Manager’s failure to publicize to the world that between 9am-5pm (whatever) an area of your home is in use as an office, you are employed, you have a job to do, and you see people by appointment only.

Of course, once people learn that you bill out at $100 per hour, they’ll be happy to pay a 50% premium for unscheduled emergency tasks, right?

2. No water cooler! It can get lonely, without co-workers for time-wasting chats. You might find yourself gaily conversing with delivery people and offering them coffee just to keep them hanging around.

The General Manager recognizes this and schedules time for you to meet with peers on a regular basis. Every Tuesday morning 8am-9am you meet, rain or shine, at The Montreal Deli or the local coffee shop; no attendance rolls, no rules, just air a few topics, grievances, success stories.

As well you have a telephone on your desk; you are allowed to contact a peer and ask “Got a couple of minutes? I want to run something by you”.

Delivery people have their appointed rounds and schedules; they don’t really have the time to keep you company. Don’t be selfish.

3. No work, no pay. Sure you can take a break or vacation any time you want, but when you’re not working you don’t get paid. Most self employed people I know rarely take holidays. And sick days? Forget about it!

The General Manager’s job is to make sure that you DO get a regular salary. The huge contract cheque goes into an interest-bearing account at the local credit union (I recommend DUCA ) and from that a regular bank transfer takes place to your checking account. Whatever the amount, you are guaranteed a personal cash flow inwards each month.

As for sick days, any General Manager who doesn’t factor occasional illness into budget estimates is falling down on the job.

I am lucky in that I rarely get sick; once a year a sinus infection maybe, but when it strikes I follow the B’s – Bed, Bread, Beverages, Books – and lie still for 2 or 3 days to let the old body do its stuff.

My General Manager recognizes this and asks that I justify EVERY trip to the desk. Is that email truly essential? Today?

4. The office is always open. Even on a Sunday morning an unfinished job seems to find you and push the guilt button. And those you work for know you’re there, so they don’t hesitate to call outside normal office hours.

The General Manager has provided you with an office and a door. OK, perhaps you are working out of the dining-nook for now, but your computer has a power switch and the light has a switch too. Turn them off.

Push away from the desk at a set time (noon for lunch, 6pm for supper) and close the door. I unplug the phone at 8pm and plug it back in at 8am. (Actually, that’s what I tell people, in reality I unplug it before I go to bed and I plug it in when I get up. The General Manager agrees that the principle is the same.)

If you find you are coping with too many emergencies, discuss this with your General Manager and point out that he/she/it is only working one hour a day five days a week, and should help you to trim your schedule to 8 hours a day 5, or at most, 6 days a week.

Use your calendar wisely; schedule trips away from the house. “Sorry! I’m not in. Leave a message”.

Tomorrow – Pitfalls 5-8

Talk to Me !

Technical Difficulties

By the time you read this the Toronto Star will likely have moved on, so I have made a snapshot of part of the page:

You KNOW that you have serious problems with a commuter train service when technical problems inhibit your reporting of, er, technical problems.

Note however that GO’S biggest headache this morning is that people are using the system, and GO hadn’t catered for that possibility.

How, in the name of all that is modern, can heavy passenger volumes be a PROBLEM?

Aaaargh!

Let me rephrase that:

How many of you would consider having your phone ring off the hook with new business a stumbling-block on your path to fame and fortune?

I’m going back to bed.

Talk to Me !

Happy Birthday

Sort of.

This is my 500th post, at a rate of 6 per week.

I`m taking the day off to celebrate.

I’ll probably play games:-

http://balldroppings.com/js/

http://chir.ag/stuff/sand/#

http://games.allmyfaves.com/ramps/

http://games.allmyfaves.com/bubbleshooter/

If I read anything at all I’ll probably be so incensed that I’ll blog about it.

Talk to Me !

My eLetter

As a direct result of the excellent talk by Promod Sharma at a recent AIC meeting, I am prompted to set aside serious time to get me long-promised eLetter off the ground.

You’ll probably learn of my experiences in the days/weeks to come, but for starters, here is a list of about 30 ideas I gleaned from my head and from reading the PDF files at MailChimp. You can see that I’ve left a few blank for quick fill-ins as they come to me.

Nothing is perfect, but having some sort of checklist steers me away from the worst mistakes.

My eLetter

My eLetter is sent on a regular basis by request only to senior executives in my target market, in particular, only those who I have met face to face.

The digestible format delivers at least one original article written by me, a few selected references to subsidiary articles written by me, and my pick-of-the-month links to other articles.

My written articles are available in podcast and video format.

I maintain a searchable online archive of past eLetters

Point 1: Template should be attractive to CEOs

Keep my most recent meetings in mind, e.g. D Mason, J Vanderkooy, S Yutzpe et al.

Point 2: Content (4 in pipeline)

I ought to be able to maintain a reservoir of 4; that takes pressure of creation and leaves me free for perfection.

Point 3: Content should be aimed at CEOs

Keep my most recent meetings in mind, e.g. D Mason, J Vanderkooy, Steve Yutzpe et al.

Point 4: The initial membership list is probably small

I am allowing a select membership, and only those CEOs I have et face-to-face.

In theory I could hold an annual get-together …

Point 5: This is a single long-term campaign

For the rest of my career, however long that is.

Point 6: Reports from ??

Point 7: Inbox Inspector

This appeared to be a pay-per-use feature.

Point 8: Check Rick & Promod’s formats and content of their first issues.

I lean more towards RS because I am thinking that the primary content is from my mind, rather than passing on links to useful stuff.

Point 9: Double opt-in

As recommended

Point 10: Opt-out link at TOP as well as bottom

Check this after the first issue

Point 11: Send a “scheduled next issue” message when they opt in AND SEND the current month’s issue

Point 12: Why does this audience want to hear from me?

They have opted in, so initially they were fascinated by me at our lunch meeting and now want to learn more about (a) how I think and (b) what benefits I can offer to them.

Point 13: What useful information can I provide to this audience?

A cold-blooded insight into the relationship between consultants and client executives.

Point 14: What do I want to accomplish with my email marketing?

I want to (a) improve circulation and (b) receive invitations to submit proposals.

Point 15: Each issue should have a benefit up front and immediate.

The lead article will be practical in addressing a real day-to-day concern of executives.

Point 16: For a long article, publish it in the blog and provide a link and summary in the eLetter

I am considering a new blog “TheCEOsConsultant”. http://theceosconsultant.blogspot.com/

I maintain http://torontrepreneur.blogspot.com/

I am considering resurrecting http://windowspowercrazy.blogspot.com/ (38 posts). I would drive this with Windows-7 related tips.

I am considering resurrecting http://imbloggled.blogspot.com/ (22 posts) or http://bogglemeboggleme.blogspot.com/ (21 posts) and merging them, then post-loading them from http://www.chrisgreaves.com/ClearThinking/ ( 143 posts)

The CEO_Blogger would be of direct and immediate interest to CEOs; the Clear Thinking blog would be of high-interest to anyone wanting to know more about my way of thinking.

Point 17: Six-month goal: Your goal; How you’ll achieve your goal; How you’ll measure your goal

My subscription goal, assuming I meet a new contact each week, is to add one out of every two I meet, thus 13 by the end of six months. This represents 50% of the new VPs I meet, and is separate from any existing contacts who opt-in

I will achieve my goal by asking EVERY VP contact, over the phone or towards the end of our meeting, if they would like to subscribe; if they do NOT offer a flat-out No, I’ll offer to send them an email with a link to my opt-in page, and I’ll follow that up with a phone call.

My opt-in page and/or my CEOBlog should guide people into subscribing.

I’ll measure my goal by tracking who I’ve dined and whether they have subscribed.

Point 18: Frequency:

Every month is too regimental, every two months might be better. Every 6 weeks? I probably have loads of material, but my purpose in the eLetter is to … There again, if I schedule a training course I want to give them plenty of notice.

Date		Title
March 2011	01	Goals
April 2011	02	Objectives
May 2011	03	Deliverables
June 2011	04	Deadlines
July 2011	05	Acceptance Tests
August 2011	06	Measurement
September 2011	07	Slippage
October 2011	08	Proof Of Concept
November 2011	09	The Written Goal
December 2011	10	Definition of Business for the Techies
January 2012	11	Where Did the Time Go?
February 2012	12	Endeavour

Point 19: Timeline for production

The material will be pre-composed, so Day1 Build and Preview in printed form, Day2 Emit for comments, Day3 Final Revision, Day4 Publish at 9:00 a.m,.,

Point 20: Include a short “Who am I?” text and a link to the web site each issue.

Done in the first issue; let’s see how well spread it is after that issue.

Point 21: When is the best time to check reports? Hours? Days? After emission?

Since my “market” is essentially GTA, if I issue the eLetter at 9:00 a.m. I might expect to see results at 10, noon, 5:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. that same day.

Point 22: “This is why open tracking only works in HTML email—not plain-text—and why the new email applications that block images by default (to protect your privacy) can screw up your open-rate stats.”

Seems like a good reason not to include, or at least not to rely on images in my eLetter.

Point 23: You can use MailChimp’s Inbox Inspector to get screenshots of your work in all the major email programs and webmail clients, to see if your CSS is breaking.

This appeared to be a pay-per-use feature.

Point 24: Why not include my phone number in the address block?

I have asked RS/PS about this.

Point 25: Don’t put all your energy into the HTML version of your email. Save some love for your plain-text message too.

Best bet seems to be

Step 1: Write the source in Word (for spell-check etc)

Step 2: Paste it into Notepad

Step 3: Save as text

Point 26: How do I phrase “add me to white list”? Is the address MailChimp or ChrisGreaves.com?

Point 27: RATES of Open, Click, Unsubscribe, Bounce back; traffic to web site; New signups

Allocate serious time for mastering the reports after the first 3 issues.

Point 28: Set up an abuse@ email account. Register that abuse@ address online (go to http://www.abuse.net)

Point 29: Bear in mind that after issue #1, CEO’s will be jumping on mid-stream.

It is important therefore to include in any item which is not #1 in a series, a link back to the first item in the series.

Point 30: The name?

Some months ago I dreamed up “Simply Brilliant CEO Newsletter”; I wanted it to be written in simple terms, I wanted it to reveal brilliant ideas, and I want it aimed at the CEO level.

Point 31:

Point 32:

Point 33:

Point 34:

Talk to Me !

Now THIS is Embarrassing!

Almost a year ago someone at a client’s site asked for help with an Excel workbook; date calculations.

I submitted a draft version with 90% complete, asking for confirmation that, as far as I had gone, everything was in order. After which I planned to code the remaining 10%.

The contact never got back to me, so I assumed that the job was dropped.

Yesterday I was asked to update the workbook for the current year, but I had not written the final 10%, the customization, for last year.

Presumably the workbook has been in use for 12 months, operating on only 9 of 10 cylinders.

Should I use this as an opportunity to complete the workbook, or should I gently tell the client that apparently they don’t need the special treatment – that last 10% - which they believed they DID need last year?

Talk to Me !

Prospector – Scanning for Hooks

There are a few contacts (companies) in my data base for which I have as yet no firm “hook” or reason for calling. In some cases I have given up on the contact (Person) and am waiting for a better contact.

Think of me as one of those fish that hide in a cave and dart out whenever food comes swimming by!

Prospector delivers me a slew of links each morning, and I glance, 3 seconds tops, at each release.

Today I realized that I am looking at just the footer to see if there is a name I DON’T recognize with a title other than “Media Relations” or “Communications”.

Any new contact name with a title of President, CEO or CFO represents an opportunity for me to make a better contact with that company.

Talk to Me !

Turning Down Work – part 3 of 3

Interesting.

Same client now wants to pay cash!

They have no brick-and-mortar address.

The web site consists of a login screen (no Home, About Us, Contact Us, etc.).

Only a cell-phone number, no land-line.

And the training is to take place off-site.

Payment in bank notes.

I smell something not quite business-like about the whole arrangement.

Years ago my accountant told me about accepting payment in cash: “On the way home, deposit the full amount in a bank machine, and on the paper receipt write the name of the company or person who paid you. When you get home, make out and mail an invoices for the total amount, reversing out the tax”.

In other words, stay on the right side of the law.

Today, of course, I don’t have to carry banknotes around with me.

They can wire the money by direct email transfer from their bank to me, and I can deposit it in my bank account.

Without leaving my office.

In fact, they’d have to make sure I had the email BEFORE I left my office to deliver the training.

Which sounds even better!

Talk to Me !