Sales – Moving Forwards

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

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

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

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

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

I Will Break the Task Into Two Smaller Tasks

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

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

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

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

Talk to Me !

They'll Be Hurdles, Not Obstacles

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

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

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

Obstacles require a change of budget, schedule, priorities.

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

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One Page Fits All

A recent issue of my eLetter prompted this response:

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

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

The Ten Commandments, ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

What About You?

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

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

Talk to Me !

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

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

It all made sense.

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

You want to try using it straight away.

So Do I

Here’s how I see it:

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

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

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

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

Talk to Me !

Sales – Every Conversation is a Sale

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

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

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

I am told that I’m a great salesman.

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is a “Sale”?

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

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

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

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

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

Talk to Me !

Priceless!

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

I know what he means.

They ARE pretty good, if I say so myself.

But they aren’t priceless.

They Come At a Price

Several prices.

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

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

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

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

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

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

There’s more, but you get the idea.

And I Believe it is True of all Human Endeavour

Especially within the realms of our businesses.

There’s a price paid for meeting David for brunch

(1) The cost of the meal & tips

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

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

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

There’s more, but you get the idea.

Every activity has a price.

The Real Question is – What’s the Payback?

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A World of Estimation

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

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

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

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

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

I Started Thinking of the Market

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

Suppose they had Roast Leg of lamb once a week.

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

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

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

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

We Eat Chicken in Ontario

Chicken is cheap (I know: “cheep!”).

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

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

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

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

Makes Me Feel Good!

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Slowly Going Bonkers

Some days I wonder …

Remember that I mailed out five personal invitations to lunch ?

One of them responded by email:

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

I replied:-

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

What on earth was I thinking?

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

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

Talk to Me !

Targeted Marketing

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

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

Nonetheless it caught my eye.

Why?

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

Borys is the member for “Etobicoke Central”.

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

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

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

If so good for his marketing and sales team.

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

Especially if it gets people to read them!

Talk to Me !

Be Careful What You Ask for …

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

He wants bone fragments, right?

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

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

Ugly.

But funnily nice.

Talk to Me !

Withholding Payment

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

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

Most people download it for free and enjoy it.

A few people ask me questions or find a bug.

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

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

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

I’ve had an idea that might work:

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

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

Talk to Me !

Mail Campaigns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talk to Me !

The 1-sheet 2-page PDF letter

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

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

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

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

And the PDF Files?

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

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

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

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

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

No one slips through the net.

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

Talk to Me !

The Back of the Envelope

Have you ever watched yourself with an envelope?

I have (watched myself, that is).

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

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

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

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

Talk to Me !

About My Fountain-Pen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talk to Me !

Picture Postage Stamps

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

Canada post allows one to use customized postage stamps.

“Why not?” I asked myself.

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

My logo is my brand is my image is me.

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

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

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

Cost?

About twice the cost of a regular stamp.

Impact?

About 100 times the impact of a regular stamp

Talk to Me !

Rainy-Day Mailings Always Get Me Up

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

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

Hah!

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

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

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

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

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

So that’s what I did, to 16 of them.

One by one

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

Here’s what it looked like:

It feels good

My contact data base says there are 119 stale contacts

I feel better!

Talk to Me !

How Will You Stand Out?

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

We're looking for people with

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

There you have it.

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

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Break Down Those Walls of Text

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

Rick asked me about his image.

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

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

Hmmm.

That’s why my post today is so short.

I’m scared of being too long-winded!

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Are You an Expert?

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

Define Expert

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

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

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

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

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

Level 2: Has posted a question on an Excel forum

Level 3: Has posted an answer on an Excel forum

Level 4: Only posts answers on an Excel forum

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

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

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

The Conclusion

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

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How NOT to do an Online Survey

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

Joe Makes Sense

I started (hint!) taking the survey.

The first page of questions was easy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can’t Be Done

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

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

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

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

I didn’t get that far.

I quit by closing the browser.

City Hall - Another Waste of Money

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Rent-a-Nudge

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

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

The 2011_05 sheet is my monthly expenses sheet.

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

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

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

Who Knew?

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

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

A Penalty-Based System.

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

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

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

Talk to Me !

Procrastination Costs Me

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

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

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

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

When will I learn?

Talk to Me !

Postal Strike, and Why it Won’t Affect Me

As I write this, a postal strike looms tomorrow.

The Toronto Star reports:-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talk to Me !

Adding Myself to Your Mailing List

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

Here’s the latest example:-

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

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

Why not?

I might learn something

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

(2) About how they prepare course outlines

(3) About other trainers who develop courses

(later)

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

Talk to Me!

Why Follow-Up is Important

Back in early January I had lunch with an executive who expressed some interest in obtaining details about Corporate Donors through The Prospector .

I sent an email immediately after our lunch meeting.

In February I left a voice mail, then followed up with another email.

Yesterday I sent a third email “I have updated my pages since last time we spoke. http://www.chrisgreaves.com/Prospector/ Look for the line "Are you interested in Corporate Donors for your charitable organization?" and click on the link.”

Sigh!

This morning a response “Hi Chris, I spoke briefly with our Sr. Director, Advancement, I***** A*****, about your product and have left the follow up to her, since it is quite a distance away from my new area of responsibility. Thanks”.

So Where Am I Now?

Not as far along the road as I had hoped to be with my first contact, who appears to have moved back into the training sphere.

But I have an extra contact.

I now have two contacts in the firm – one for Training (which I deliver) and one for Marketing (which I deliver as a service).

That’s Good, Isn’t it?

And it arises because I am tenacious and follow-up, month by month, with suggestions.

Talk to Me !

Hoist with His Own Petard

It is always this sweet!

I have a good colleague who continually pesters me about how I do free work.

“Chris, ya gotta CHARGE for doing things for people, even if they ARE your friends”.

To make it worse, twenty years ago I once snapped at him “Time is Money”, and he’s been on to my case about it ever since.

Well, what goes around comes back, or whatever that expression is.

Today he called for help with Excel charts, especially generating Charts in Excel.

Heh heh!

He says he’ll phone me back.

We’ll see.

Talk to Me !

Get in on the Ground Floor

I chatted recently with a member of a Rotary club. I have no reason to suspect that the conversation would have been different had I been chatting with a member of Lions , Kiwanis , or any other business leader’s service club.

If you have reached the age of 35 and have kept your eyes open while driving around the {name of your country here} you’ll be aware that every small town has signs on the outskirts advising of the regular dates and times of service meetings.

Great Organizations

I almost joined Rotary 10 years ago, but shied away from their excellent requirement that I should aim to attend 52 meetings each year; I felt I could not do that at the time, and that it would be wrong of me to pretend that I could.

Rotary’s web site says in part “If members miss a meeting of their own club, they’re encouraged to expand their Rotary horizons by attending a meeting of any other Rotary club in the world.”.

During our chat my colleague mentioned that his local group was aged; the average age of members was quite high, and I reflect that service clubs like Rotary, Lions, and Kiwanis must be prepared for this as the years go by.

My generation needed a place to network with other business leaders in the community.

Today’s Generation

Today’s generation get their satisfaction from social networking 24 hours a day, with occasional spontaneous face-to-face meetings.

I can understand and accept that email and other social networking tools reduce the need for face-to-face meetings.

That’s sad for Rotary, Lions, and Kiwanis, because they have been the backbone of society for about a hundred years.

The service clubs, of course, are hungry and getting hungrier for new members.

What this Means

That means that if you show up in a suit you’ll be welcomed more enthusiastically than ever before.

And you’ll have a greater-than-ever chance to accelerate your status in the local business community.

The fact that you’ll be welcome in thousands of business communities around the world is icing on the cake.

Talk to Me !

Tweet Tips

I have been twittering for about 4 months now, still finding my way about.

I want my tweets to be regular but low volume, perhaps two per day, at most, and I’m tied to my computer fir tweeting.

I have learned to not-follow people whose tweets flood out my screen.

I have learned to recognize twitter-spam – why would someone with 21,000 followers follow ME?

And I have realized that I can include many streams in my Tweets.

I hit on the intellectual challenge of trying to emit all my training in tweets – 140 characters or less, and given the broad range of material I own, that’s quite a challenge.

To test the waters I built a Microsoft Word document with a table 140 characters wide.

I set the font to be a fixed-width font – Courier – and made myself a ruler in the top row.

You can see where I typed in 10 digits then pasted it 13 times to yield a 140-character ruler.

Below it I typed or pasted in about 40 initial tweets, not one of which exceeds the row length (There is no line overflow within a row). I like to have a set of items in the pipeline; it inhibits stress and pressure.

I have a scheduled date on the left-hand side – Monday, Wednesday & Friday – and a published date on the right-hand side.

And away I go!

In writing this up I realize that I should have a link to my web site and /or my blog.

I’d better get started on that this evening …

P.S. I later reduced my ruler to 111 characters, restricting my text tweet to 111 characters means I have enough space left over to append 29 characters www.ChrisGreaves.com/WinTips to each tweet.

Talk to Me !

One Small Step

• Sales are made through relationships
• Relationships are built meeting by meeting.
• Meetings are built conversation by conversation.
• Conversations are built sentence by sentence.

And so on

Three weeks ago I called Gordon. We chatted for ten minutes and I sent an email with a suggestion for co-operative marketing.

A week later I called with a follow-up, but got voice-mail, so I left a message.

This morning Gordon called me back; he is up to his armpits in tax-year stuff, can we talk once the April 30 deadline is gone?

Sure

I offered to re-send the email in the first week of May (as a service to him so he doesn’t have to locate it). Also as a bonus to me – in early May he’ll get an email from me AND then a phone call; I’ll nudge him twice!

Naturally I’m disappointed that this morning he didn’t endorse my idea and transfer cash to my bank account.

But that little frisson of disappointment is basking in the glow of knowing that Gordon and I are building a good mental picture of each other – I think of him as someone who returns phone calls, does have valid reasons for the delay, does offer to schedule a chat – and he sees me (I trust) as someone with ideas, someone who is flexible and graceful, and who can provide a service to others, even in the matter of rescheduling conversations.

Relationships, like houses, are built one brick at a time.

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Small is Beautiful

For amusement I read John Grisham stories, and often enough he describes courtroom or boardroom scenes with the head honcho billing $300/hour and two or three associates billing $150/hour each; they are also billing the reams, literally, of paper charged out to the client. Bulk is money, say the lawyers.

But the most earth-shattering ideas are succinct enough to make my lips purse.

Case 1: Watson & Crick’s famous paper on DNA.

Watson JD, Crick FH (April 1953). "Molecular structure of nucleic acids; a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid" (PDF). Nature 171 (4356): 737–738

Check it out. It fits onto a single sheet of A4 paper (“Letter” in the US) and changed the face of Biology. It didn’t derail Darwin; it reinforced his ideas and showed them to be ahead of his time.

Case 2: Edsger W.Dijkstra’s “ A Case against the GO TO Statement ”

It fits easily onto two pages, but I’ve seen condensation that fit on one.

I’ll augment this blog post with other examples as they come to my mind.

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Mill Stone or Mile Stone?

There’s not a great deal of difference in the spelling. Typically this would slip right through any spell-checker and embarrass me.

And yet this morning I had reason to look back over the past week, and in particular events of yesterday.

One particular part of yesterday was a milestone; something I can brag about for years to come.

Another part of yesterday is so embarrassing that I’ll cringe each time I think of it.

The two events diametrically opposed in terms of the publicity I’d like.

And yet, if I focus on achieving the milestones, and take some time to avoid the mill stones, life can only go on getting better.

Talk to Me!

Telecottages

I met this word for the first time today in The Telegraph . Of course I Googled it and got 27,600 results on 0.19 seconds, so it’s probably only been around for seven minutes.

“I should expect companies rapidly to adopt distance working practices like teleconferencing and small communities to build suitably sized local offices (telecottages) for those of us who find it hard to work from home.”

I like working from home, but I also like working in the company of other people.

I know (but have never used) of the shared-office concept, where one rents a room for a fixed schedule each week and shares a receptionist/secretary, or just uses the facilities as a mail-drop and boardroom.

I know (but have never used) the other extreme of working at that long table in the public library or that cheap table in the coffee shop.

I’m thinking of an alternative of setting up a spare room or corner in one’s own abode where solo entrepreneurs can come to sit and work quietly, or (at a mutually convenient time) indulge in conversation.

I have a spare bedroom with a table, chair and cable to my router.

I have a friend and colleague who stays overnight occasionally and/or uses the room as an office.

Now I wonder how it would be if I offered it as a retreat or facility where people could

(1) Book a specific time each week to come and quietly work through their business finances, sort dockets, issue invoices, chase overdue accounts and do data-entry.

(2) Stare at the leafy trees outside the balcony and jot down creative thoughts for a new approach, with paper on pencil.

(3) Avail themselves of coffee, tea and home-made cookies at scheduled tea-breaks (10:00 a.m. 11:00 a.m.) and possibly share a light lunch.

(4) Get that project wrapped up and tested on a different machine, or in isolation from the regular land-line. As deadlines approach it would be as if they were working-on-site for another client, but are secretly bunkered down in my place.

I wonder how many of us have a spare corner somewhere that we could weave into our network?

Talk to Me !

What Shall we do with the Pile of Business Cards?

Two weeks ago I sat down with a pile of business cards collected over the years. The stack was about three inches high.

By tossing out the car-dealers and folks who make up flower baskets for corporate events, I managed to reduce the stack to about an inch.

I have half an inch left to process.

The Strategy is Straightforward: Tell The Truth

The tactic is just as simple: I pick up the phone and call them. I tell them that I have their business card but am struggling to know why. Honestly. We must have met at some event, but I have no written note on the back of the card to tell me why.

Usually we sniff each other and tumble to the why and wherefore.

In one case I’d written “Bluish Jacket” and got away with that by saying “I must have thought it was a lovely shade of blue for me to note it down on the back of your card”, which made her bush and giggle a bit.

Today I phoned Joel; same spiel, honestly, I don’t know where we met. He doesn’t know what AIC stands for; I haven’t attended an event in Ottawa for over 10 years …

Finally He Said “Let’s Connect on LinkedIn”

“Well I don’t want to waste your time”, I hesitated.

“No”, he said. “There is a reason you picked up my card”.

“I see this as an opportunity”.

I feel blessed to know Joel, and I haven’t even connected on LinkedIn yet.

I’ll do it right now.

Talk to Me !

When is Free Not Free?

A few weeks ago I found myself staring at an online survey hosted by OfficeTeam .

“Take the FREE survey now” it said.

I clicked the button.

I clicked the next button (“Start Survey”)

Whoa!

How does my first name or last name affect my color?

And I didn’t choose my email address, it was foisted on me by the administrative staff at www.Grab_GrabMore_And_GrabAll.com .

My telephone number? I live in Oakville and work in Oshawa. Which number affects my color?

This is NOT FREE.

It is a personal data grab.

Really.

If you want my personal data, you have to earn it.

First let’s run the survey.

Then you get to ask ‘Want to know more about us” and I’ll consider adding my name to your mailing list.

But not my name and postal address.

Yet.

Talk to Me !

Know When to Pick up the Phone

This post’s inspiration comes from another great Staples Blog .

25 years ago I worked at/for I.P. Sharp Associates, pioneers of global email systems, amongst other things.

The team on which I worked had about a dozen members, sitting in about 8 rooms, all within 30 seconds walk of the boardroom.

Projects dragged on for months because consensus was by email.

And since people did not then (and do not now) respond to email the instant it arrives, consensus took time.

The worst case I recall arose when someone discovered “enclosed arrays” and started using them, then passed on the rudimentary skill by email. An email discussion arose, with bugs, problems, novice acts and the whole range of ills that spread like a virus through a team of programmers.

I believed then, and I believe now, that much time and effort would have been saved has the team leader called a 15-minute standing-only meeting in the nearby board room.

Conversation would have taken place in real time with the benefit of a board room.

Instead six months later the debate was still in motion.

It is true today (a quarter century is a long time in computing technology!).

PICK UP THE PHONE if you want a discussion or a dialogue.

Use email to inform.

Want to decide where and when to meet for lunch? Phone and nut out the details. Then send an email confirmation so that you can be sure you are both reading from the same page.

Talk to Me !

How to Save Time with Hotkeys, Macros and Gestures

WinHotKey

Another great article from itbusiness.ca , but, of course, you are wondering whether you can trust the little application “ WinHotKey0.70.exe ”.

Well, I don’t know either, but I’ve stuck my neck out and installed it because I am always on the lookout for ways to remove the boring and repetitive tasks of my life.

It Works!

I currently have it assigned to opening common documents for me. The names of the documents may mean nothing to you, but the list should give you an idea that I am, as usual, following the 95/5 rule.

On the left-hand side of my keyboard, the Windows, Ctrl and Shift keys sit together so they are easy for me to tap with fingers of my left hand. The index finger of my right hand stabs out the mnemonic letter of the document.

A Great Timesaver!

AutoHotkey

Thus emboldened I set off to explore AutoHotkey104805_Install.exe.

It’s early days yet, so I’ll probably issue a short Technical paper on this more complex application.

In the meantime I am pleased to report that the following little script works!

; Chris Greaves pasted then edited the following line:-
#space::Run www.ChrisGreaves.com 

The Windows key and the Space bar launches Firefox 3.6.15 and opens up my home page.

Neat!

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The Top 3 of 55 Secrets to Master the Software Apps You Use Everyday

At Great Personal Expense™ I read through all 55 secrets – not secretes any more because they are published on the web! – and have distilled from them 3 which ought to satisfy any busy entrepreneur who needs more time:

(1) Change Windows Explorer's default folder:

Tired of clicking through Windows Explorer to find the one folder you use regularly? You can save precious time and mouse clicks by making Windows Explorer open your favorite folder by default. Right-click the Explorer icon in your taskbar, and then right-click Windows Explorer and select Properties. In the Target field, add a space and a file path at the end of the ‘%windir%\explorer.exe' section, so that the new (longer) path looks like this: ‘%windir%\explorer.exe C:\Users\yourusername\yourfolder'.

I’d go one better, and create (at most) a half-dozen shortcuts, one for each major project.

Here’s a screenshot of the (right-click then ) Properties box for one of my shortcuts.

(2) Restore your Quick Launch bar:

Windows 7 added a lot of neat features to the taskbar, but in the process it got rid of the Quick Launch bar. Fortunately, bringing Quick Launch back is fairly easy. Right-click the taskbar and uncheck Lock the taskbar; then right-click the taskbar again and choose New toolbar. Type %appdata%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch into the file path, and then click the arrow button on the right to navigate to that folder. Quick Launch will be back in action.

I’d go further and use the old 95%/5% rule (95% of the time we are using 5% of our applications). Settle on a number – a dozen is good enough – and drop your top twelve most-frequently launched applications onto the Quick Launch bar.

Stop wasting time loading programs by following the rule “Never Close, Never Minimize”, and use Alt-Tab instead.

(3) Track time with Notepad:

Type .LOG (in all-capital letters) on the first line of a Notepad document, and Notepad will automatically stamp the current date and time in the doc every time you open it--handy for logging events or notes.

I liked this so much when I met it 15 years ago that I turned it into a billing application, which YOU can download for FREE from my web site.

When the phone rings, I click the Quick Launch icon BEFORE I pick up the phone; that way the start of the conversation is logged. If it is a long conversation, I tap the F5 function key when we are done. Now nobody gets away with a 2-minute chat that consumed 35 minutes of my precious time.

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Why You Need a Proof-Reader for a Friend

The recent press release on Canada News Wire left me confused.

“Véronique Cloutier, Éric Salvail and Justin Bieber all have something in common: they're helping people rebuild their lives after losing their vision - by donating their sunglasses to CNIB (Canadian National Institute for the Blind) for the charity's upcoming Shades of Fun auction on eBay.”

I knew that Justin Bieber was popular (amongst the younger set),

I hadn’t realized that he was blind.

What a guy!

Talk to Me !

When Small is Ugly, When Small is Beautiful

Out driving today, I pulled up at Bloor & West Mall and watched a grandma escort a small boy across Bloor street. The small boy was driving an electric car, a micro-car, the sort that might be OK in the backyard, but I have doubts about the wisdom of a powered vehicle out near real traffic.

Nonetheless, beautiful. I can see the utility of a small electric car towing a small trailer of groceries so that grandma doesn’t have to lug home bags of vegetables.

Later that afternoon waiting to turn left at the intersection of Carlingview and International Boulevard I watched the driver of a large SUV edge up, desperately anxious to squeeze between a car waiting to go straight ahead, and the curb leading to the right, to the highway on-ramp.

Couldn’t make it.

Ugly. Ugly look on the SUV driver’s face. Ugly situation. Should’ve bought a smaller car!

Small businesses are beautiful when adaptability and flexibility are needed; small businesses are lithe and can often weather a minor economic downturn by eating rice, beans and pasta instead of laying off 100% of the workforces (Me!)

But small businesses are ugly when it comes to seeking a bank loan, or when they are too timid to charge a reasonable rate.

My small business can be both beautiful and ugly, depending on my situation, and my outlook.

Talk to Me !

Setting Goals

I couldn’t have said it better myself, so I’m quoting the CopyBlogger article here:-

1. Can you please define your project? You might imagine a company that’s called in a copywriter has an idea what they want. Much of the time, you would be wrong. They’re hoping you can help them figure out whether their best new piece of content would be a white paper, a revised landing page , or eight blog posts a month. If they can’t figure it out even with your help, try to find a small initial project they’re willing to greenlight to get things moving.

My first question to every client is “What is your Goal?”

Note that it has to be THEIR goal, and that it is singular, not plural.

If they start rabbiting on about plural goals, they are really giving you a list of objectives; write them down and then continue probing to see if all the objectives are sub-goals of a larger goal.

If the objectives are unrelated, or form into several groups, then you have a list of objectives that belong (separately) to different goals, that is, you now know that your client has several goals.

Identify the major goal (if this is your first dealing with this new client then you probably should define “major” as “maximize measurable results for minimal measurable effort”) and work on that.

If the client baulks and (with much hand-waving) says that ALL the goals are major, then the goals are themselves sub-goals of a larger goal. Great. You’re in there for the long haul.

Talk to Me !

Get Your Clients to Pig Out on Fast Food

… and put extra cash in your pocket in the process.

Say what you like about McDonalds, they have some pretty bright people in their marketing and sales departments.

I’m assuming that they were the ones to come up with the “Biggy that?” phrase, asking customers if they would like to upgrade a regular order to a larger drink or fries serving.

It’s my guess too that McDonalds sparked the “combo” offer, where three items are packaged into a single-price bundle, usually (but not always) representing a saving on purchasing the individual items separately.

The Toronto Star article “ Combo meals feed our tendency to pig out on fast food ” suggests to me that I could make a bit more money by asking the client if they’d like a combo, instead of the project they have ordered.

You are buying two days training? Would you like to throw in some extra cash and have me install some of my time-saving utilities?

You are buying application development? How about a half-day’s executive training to explain the reasoning behind the design and development?

You want the seven VP workbooks merged? How would it be if I spend half a day with the VPs impressing on them the need for good design from the get-go?

In particular, I like the idea of simplification:-

“People say they like many choices, but in the end if they can eliminate the number of choices, they will do that,” she says. “They take the easy way. They perceive they are getting value.”

Lunch, anyone? It’s on me. The Montreal Deli

Talk to Me !

Get Your Clients to Pig Out on Fast Food

… and put extra cash in your pocket in the process.

Say what you like about McDonalds, they have some pretty bright people in their marketing and sales departments.

I’m assuming that they were the ones to come up with the “Biggy that?” phrase, asking customers if they would like to upgrade a regular order to a larger drink or fries serving.

It’s my guess too that McDonalds sparked the “combo” offer, where three items are packaged into a single-price bundle, usually (but not always) representing a saving on purchasing the individual items separately.

The Toronto Star article “ Combo meals feed our tendency to pig out on fast food ” suggests to me that I could make a bit more money by asking the client if they’d like a combo, instead of the project they have ordered.

• You are buying two days training? Would you like to throw in some extra cash and have me install some of my time-saving utilities?
• You are buying application development? How about a half-day’s executive training to explain the reasoning behind the design and development?
• You want the seven VP workbooks merged? How would it be if I spend half a day with the VPs impressing on them the need for good design from the get-go?

In particular, I like the idea of simplification:-

“People say they like many choices, but in the end if they can eliminate the number of choices, they will do that,” she says. “They take the easy way. They perceive they are getting value.”

Lunch, anyone? It’s on me. The Montreal Deli

Talk to Me !

1 Easy Tip for Spring Cleaning

It’s spring-time, right? And yes, you figure on setting aside a day to make-new-again (re-nov-ate) your office.

Here’s a tip:

Don’t

Instead, seize on just one item and do something with it.

In my stationery closet I see three types of cards – a Christmassy-card, suitable for mailing out at, well, Christmas time, an arty card , suitable for mailing out at other times, and a couple of cartons of promotional cards which didn’t really get off the ground.

Hundreds of cards of about ten types.

I have taken out about three dozen of each type and laid them in some narrow shelving.

ONE type I have placed by my front door.

For the rest of this month I shall take a couple with me whenever I go out.

• If I end up at The Montreal Deli I shall pin a couple to their notice board.
• If I end up at a networking meeting I shall leave a couple on the back table.
• If I am meeting with a prospect, I may hand one over as a parting gift.

But they aren’t doing me any good sitting in my stationary closet, are they?

And You?

What do you have lying around that could be put to good promotional use?

Talk to Me !

Six Career Resolutions

Another great Accountemps press release outlines “Six Career Resolutions and Tips for Keeping Them”.

They are just as applicable to entrepreneurs:

1. 'I want an additional client.' Schedule time each week to revise your web-site, build your LinkedIn profile, research new prospects and set up meetings with business contacts. Reassess these goals monthly, and reward yourself when you meet key milestones.

2. 'I want to build my network.' Join at least one professional association, and attend meetings regularly. Foster your peer-level network by suggesting informal get-togethers in the early-morning.

3. 'I want to enhance my marketability.' Pursue a certification, learn a new software application or take a course to develop your skill set. Consider pursuing a leadership role with an industry or professional association or volunteering with a nonprofit group whose cause you are passionate about.

4. 'I want to improve my business performance.' Meet with your business coach or your accountant to identify areas for improvement. Take on a volunteer project that showcases your new skills.

5. 'I want a change in title.' Call your existing clients and ask them for their impressions of you. How do they describe you to their own colleagues?

6. 'I want to raise my rates.' Research rates in your field—perhaps by having a good friend phone your competitors. Then see how these rates compare with those in your Business Model.

Talk to Me !

Renewing Your Past Clients

Robert Middleton’s Blog is a good read.

On April 26th he blogged about "Renewing Your Past Clients".

Ho-hum so far – a good post, a read, move on to the next blog . . .

And then this caught my eye:-

“5. To make all of this work, you need a solid foundation which includes the following elements: a) A favorable past experience with that client b) (etc.)”

If you’ve been in business longer than a year, you will have at least one client-bad-memory. A project that went wrong; a terrible mis-understanding; a falling-out.

How can you recover from that? Especially when the last experience, the most recent-memory is a bitter one.

Robert Middleton makes this point “When you contact them, you are not a stranger to them”.

I went back and reread “A favorable past experience …”

Now . . .

“A favorable past experience” is different from “the last experience”, and so this morning I made a list of all the clients for whom I feel inhibitions.

In one column, face the facts, “Why do I feel awkward?”; not a matter of “Who was at fault?”, but just “What event or incident marked the watershed in our relationships?”.

In the second column I tried to remember the very best thing that had happened and that could/would be remembered by my contact.

My reasoning is this:

When I call them, I will be aware that their first unspoken thought might be that negative incident. So BEFORE I call them, I too have that incident to hand.

But what they don’t know is that within 3 seconds of the start of the conversation I will have steered them away from that negative thought to a very positive memory.

It’s an ambush, I guess, and it should work!

Thanks Robert!

Talk to Me!

He was a Terrible Neighbour, . . .

He was a Terrible Neighbour, Does that Mean He Can't Be a Good Lawyer?

A recent Toronto Star article carries a story about a lawyer whose “application to become a lawyer was rejected by the Law Society of Upper Canada when he failed to meet its “good character” requirement because of his aggressive and bizarre conduct as a member of his condo’s board”.

So, asks the Toronto Star, does that mean he can’t be a good lawyer?

My Take on this is “Yes, That’s What it Means”

Lawyers, as we all know, aren’t in it for justice or truth; they are in it to become partner and retire at 45 with a $1,500,000 income from the partnership.

Or as a close friend once told me “Get the meanest, baddest, ball-kickingest gun-slinging lawyer you can find, Chris, because you’re too human to fight dirty, and she isn’t”.

The lawyer or consultant who can’t get on with neighbors or other people on the streetcar isn’t going to get on with clients.

I know that I’m not the most at-ease person in a social situation; I also know that I can bite my lip and pursue social platitudes for a short while, providing I can see an earnest discussion of time-saving tactics in business –computing down the road.

I’d rather have an intense discussion about religion and politics than that milk-sop “what-books-have-you-read stuff any day.

A doctor who cannot put a patient at ease isn’t go to learn the full extent of the patient’s dis-ease.

A lawyer who cannot slide into a client’s mind with ease isn’t going to get very far into a client’s mind

And a consultant who cannot honestly identify with the organizations pain and problems isn’t going to ride side-by-side with the client off into the glorious sunset of their dreams.

Talk to Me !

When the Booked Conference Call Fails to Materialize

The conference call has been arranged for a week now, and I’m looking forward to it.

I have a great deal of respect for the gentleman, and I want to pitch an idea, not necessarily a sale to him (although I’d be delighted if he’d pick up on it!) as much as to get some feedback along the lines of “yes, this could work” or “no, this really stinks”.

I have exchanged emails with his Administrative Assistant, corrected my faulty impression of his phone number, cleared my desk, spent 5 minutes in deep breathing, got a fresh sheet of paper, a sharp pencil …

… and at 1:00 p.m. I pick up the phone and dial.

Voice-mail

I leave a short message, “it’s one o’clock and you’re probably running a bit late, please give me a call at 416-621-9348”.

Silence

A couple of times the phone rings and I grab it, staring at the Call Display; both times close friends, and they understand when I clear the line quickly.

At 2:15 p.m. I think “What have I got to lose?”, and dial again.

I get straight through and ask for 5 minutes and am told he has 15.

I pitch the idea, he is enthusiastic “Please send me something by email”, and I feel that I am having trouble dis-engaging.

What do I learn?

Something I seem to have learned every day of my life:

• We are human; mistakes happen; lines get crossed.

Also never fear being forward in establishing contact.

Talk to Me !

YouTube – What Took Me so Long?

I am surely the world’s slowest learner.

I’ve had a YouTube video about my 1-click Indexer up on YouTube for about 18 months now (October 5, 2009 06:53 PM). It has received 883 views, maybe a dozen of them mine.

That is Exposure

Yesterday I began making a list of Periodic Tasks – those things I must keep topped up, but distinct from my regular daily tasks.

For example, each month I ought to spend SOME time crating or upgrading LinkedIn, Product upgrade/upload, Home Web page, Home Web post, Podcast, Training item, eLetter, Personal Web page, Personal Web post, Camtasia Video, Technical paper – create or clean, YouTube videos … you get the idea.

YouTube Videos?

Since I already have about two dozen videos posted on my web site , why haven’t I shot them off to YouTube?

Who visits my web site? 300 visits per month, 600 in one good month back in March 2010, but I suspect that might have been me inspecting some updates!

Who visits YouTube? At least 883 people, obviously!

Clincher Number 1: YouTube & Google automatically indexes every submission

Clincher Number 2: YouTube is where people go to find out HowTo do everything. It is where I should post my answers to their questions.

Clincher Number 3: YouTube is forever. Long after I’m gone, people can get frustrated not being able to d/l tools from my web site.

Talk to Me !

P.S. For as long as I remember to update it, here’s a tracking of videos/views

Date	Uploaded	Views	Indexer
Tuesday, April 26, 2011	46	947
Wednesday, April 27, 2011	46	970	896
Thursday, April 28, 2011	46	988	902
Monday, May 02, 2011	47	1,009	914
Tuesday, May 03, 2011	47	1,014	919

P.S. Since drafting this article I came across a HighSpot blog item which reads, in part:

So many search queries are made for YouTube content that it can be considered the #2 search engine in the world . Did you catch that? Apart from Google, there is no other site that users search more often for content.

This is Disgusting!

26-Jan-89

The record was added to my database; that’s 22 years ago! Over the years I have essayed to get in touch with, in the hopes of getting work from, this prospect.

22 years surely has to be a record.

That’s what “disgusting” refers to – how can I have left this prospect dangling on the vine for so long?

2010/09/22

In mid-September last year, as part of my “blitz” aimed at meeting everyone face to face, I received an email advising that my contact no longer worked there, and with it, the name and extension of the new contact.

I began a new relationship, this one not hampered by “Why doesn’t he give up?”:-

“Great Chris, thank you..... I would like to chat with you sometime next week.”

We chatted by phone, then by a series of emails, during which phase I tried to secure a meeting:-

2010/09/22 Do you teach ACCESS at all? I am curious....as from time to time I have some of our Corporate clients looking for training in this.

2010/09/22 11:10 Roberta, thanks for the email. I have updated my contact database as you suggested. The mailed letter is for a course

2010/10/05 I called her back; Please send her a BIO (training related) and a set of Access topics.

2010/11/25 I left a voice-mail asking for coffee/lunch date

2010/11/29 She is busy these 2 weeks with a new project manager. "How about you give me a call in a couple of weeks".

2010/12/14 They are renegotiating contracts right now. I agreed to call her early in the New Year.

2011/01/05 I issued my Xmas letter

2011/01/14 They hope to start meeting with new facilitators late February. Call her back on the 18th.

2011/01/19 She doesn't have time; It sounds like a non-starter.

2011/04/01 I left a voice-mail suggesting a meeting Tue-Fri next week

Then this morning:-

2011/04/04 I decided to send an email "Hi Roberta. I am free this week and wonder whether you might find time to meet with me some time Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday of Friday. * Please let me know what time suits you and I'll drive up to meet you."

Roberta replied:-

2011/04/04 I am available on Wednesday or Thursday

SUCCESS!

I settled on Wednesday.

But look at the record: 22 years of half-hearted efforts to establish contact, mainly by a Christmas card once a year and a phone call every two years. Never a determined effort to meet face-to-face.

Then within the space of 6 months, 12 contacts before I get an appointment.

I Nearly Gave up in January

Let’s see what Wednesday brings.

Talk to Me !

Ideas Pop up Everywhere

So I’m chatting with Cathy Nesbitt of Cathy’s Crawly Composters and she lest drop that she’s heading off to a cold-frame tour at 1Danforth Avenue.

Me being me once we get off the phone I search the web for “1Danforth Avenue” and find myself at this events page .

And what do I see there but “You will be working in pairs, so register with a friend!”. This is a construction workshop, right? Screwdriver, staple gun etc.

And I think to myself, why not use this as a condition for my training courses?

It makes sense to have two people from the same organization in class, because they can encourage each other once they return to work.

And it might even boost my revenues.

After all, it’s how I got into computing in May 1967.

Talk to Me !