Uneaten Food

This Peninsula Press article caught my eye.

I'm starting to think that articles like this are heading in the right direction in the wrong vehicle.

Wasting food is bad, as is wasting any resource (food, people, time, ...)

But tying this message to three other highly debatable messages ("Food waste generates methane, a greenhouse gas with an impact on global warming that is 21 times greater than that of carbon dioxide") is even worse, because it represents a missed opportunity.

In Detail

I happen to believe that (a) Global warming has been taking place for over 13,000 years - ever since the Wisconsin ice-sheet started melting

(b) Carbon Di-oxide is good for plants, and that means good for us.

(c) The oceans are very good at absorbing excess CO2 (see e.g. The White Cliffs of Dover), there's just a time lag that is longer than 70 years

(d) The earth is quite good at recycling methane, too (I suspect that the dinosaurs, vegetarians mostly, produced more methane than cows do today)

In Consequence

In consequence the article turns me off on 4 counts before it gets into its message.

Any reader who disagrees with any ONE of those four points is liable to adopt a defensive or negative attitude to the remainder of the article.

I can't see what's wrong with just saying "serving food that can't be eaten is insane", and develop that idea, without discussing the relevant safety merits of SUVs (which the author didn't do) or whether Rob Ford should close libraries (ditto).

Waddyareckon?

Talk to Me !

Ethics – Part 6/6

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Here, to my mind, is the real question about ethics:

Question 10 (The BIG one):

If I had inflated my hours or under-tipped the hard-working waitresses, would YOU like to do business with ME?

Talk to Me !

P.S. You might like:-

Ethics of the Gut

Ethics of the Coin Toss

What is Your Biggest Asset?

Ethics – Part 5/6

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

You don’t need to subscribe to religion to understand the parable of the laborers in the vineyard .

It’s a parable, OK?

And it’s an excellent guideline for contract law.

Question 5: If you agree to work all day for one penny, you should work all day for one penny, right?

Question 6: If you agree to work for half the day for one penny, you should work for half the day for one penny, right?

Question 7: If you agree to be honest in reporting your hours, should you be honest in reporting your hours?

Question 8: Or tipping for good service?

Question 9: Always?

Make sure you have answered all qustions in all five postings before reading tomorrow’s post!

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Ethics – Part 4/6

Monday, August 1, 2011

• You dine at a local diner at least a once week. Sometimes four times a week. Breakfast meeting, or lunch with a colleague; supper with a friend.
• You tip generously above the 15% mark because often enough you order just a $6 salad with a glass of water (no ice!), and yet you get better service than the stranger who orders steak, beer, and rich chocolate cake.

Last night, distracted, you dropped a $20 bill on the tray alongside your friend’s $20 bill, $40 payment for a bill of $25 for two meals!

The waitress asked if you wanted change and, distracted, you smiled and said “No thanks”.

Question 4: Next time you eat at that diner, do you tip substantially less to recoup the excess you inadvertently left on the table last night?

Talk to Me !

Ethics – Part 3/6

Saturday, July 30, 2011

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

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

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

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

Talk to Me !

Ethics – Part 2/6

Friday, July 29, 2011

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

The client calls you to apologize:

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

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

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

Talk to Me !

Ethics – Part 1/6

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

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

Thursday, July 28, 2011

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

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

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

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

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

Talk to Me !

P.S. You might like:-

Ethics of the Gut

Ethics of the Coin Toss

What is Your Biggest Asset?

You Must Know SOMETHING!

Grab a copy of the FREE Primo PDF writer .

• Install it.
• Start using it.

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

Of course, starting today you have nothing.

But You Must Know Something

Otherwise you wouldn’t be in business.

Pull up that first contact.

Visualize yourself sitting at lunch with them.

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

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

• So Write that up

One page. A story. With a happy ending.

PDF it and send it off.

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

And so on.

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

Talk to Me !

A Simple Guide to Long-Distance Action Scams

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

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

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

2: Power off and UNPLUG your computer power source

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

4: Select the 3rd book from the top.

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

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

7: Plug in the computer and power it up.

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

Great!

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

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

Talk to Me !

More About Goals

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

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

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

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

Note the Quantifiers.

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

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

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

OK.

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

Note the Quantifiers.

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

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

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

Why the Stress on Quantifiers?

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

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

There are 30 days in a month.

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

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

It’s called a hunger-strike.

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

Management Measures .

There are Four Quantifiers !

Talk to Me !

Why do You do What You do?

A recent CopyBlogger post had this surprising nugget:

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

Brill!

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

Talk to Me !

Incentive To Reply

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

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

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

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

Phone calls:

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

My Postal mailings:

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

Emails:

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

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

Channel	Postal mail	eMail	Phone	Voice mail
	Drop the card in the mail.	Click Reply, then Click Send	What struck you most about the article?	I have a gift card to send, please confirm your postal address.
	Use the stamp		Did you like the stamp?

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

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

Drop the card in the mail

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

Use the stamp

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

Click Reply, then Click Send

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

What struck you most about the article?

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

Did you like the stamp?

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

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

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

It’s a bribe, albeit a small one.

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

Talk to Me !

Giving It Away

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

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

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

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

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

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

For one thing I sound good just volunteering that.

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

Talk to Me !

Even Idiots Have Their Uses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I advise against doing that.

Idiots have their uses

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

How’s that Working for You?

Sales – Every Conversation is a Sale

Strike up a Conversation

More Elevator Speeches

And more.

We are bombarded with advice on how to act.

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

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

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

Talk to Me !

The Importance of Follow-up

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just to stay in touch

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

Talk to Me !

Six Business Resolutions and Tips for Keeping Them

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

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

The first tip reads in part:=

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talk to Me !

The Billable Phone Call

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talk to Me !

Friday’s Excuses

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

It’s Friday morning.

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

It’s Monday morning.

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

It’s Tuesday morning.

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

It’s Wednesday afternoon.

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

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

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

Talk to Me !

Cold-Calling Sales is Dead

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

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

“Uh-huh”, she said.

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

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

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

Period.

And There You Have it

(1) There was no relationship

(2) There was no problem to solve.

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

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

• Because that telephone can really BITE.

You know what I mean.

There’s no future in making calls like that.

Ever!

So don’t make them.

Do Something Else Instead

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

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

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

Then spend time building that relationship.

Talk to Me !

Promotion in Every Email

I am of two minds about this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talk to Me !

Improving Your Warm Calls

You need help with your telephone technique.

You wouldn’t be reading this otherwise!

Here’s What I Did:

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

Here’s What I do:

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

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

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

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

I am making penciled notes at the same time.

When the Call is Over

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

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

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

Management measures

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

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

Talk to Me !

Life-Time Technical Assistance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question 5: Why am I so worried?

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

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

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

And stealing your customers.

It’s not about price.

It’s About SERVICE

Talk to Me !

Estimating and Cheating

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

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

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

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

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

Preliminary Discussions

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

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

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

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

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

Wrong

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

Here’s where we keep everybody honest.

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

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

Advantage 1:

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

Now the 15 minutes seems like an awfully short time.

Advantage 2:

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

Advantage 3:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talk to Me !

What’s Wrong with this Letter?

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

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

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

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

With thanks

Chris Greaves

No Call to Action!

I can’t believe I sent this off.

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

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

And So On.

But “Here it is”?

I Need My Head Read!

Talk to Me !

It’s Not Bragging If You’ve Got Proof

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

Solo entrepreneurs often have a tendency to belittle skills.

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

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

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

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

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

But Then . . .

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

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

Talk to Me !

The Flavor of the Proposal

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

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

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

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

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

Category 1: Reduce staff needed to perform a task

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

Category 3: Produce an otherwise unattainable result.

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

The point I wish to make is this:

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

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

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

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

Talk to Me !

LinkedIn – and the Drudgery of Updating Same

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

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

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

So Phone Me!

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

That’s just page 1 of 10.

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

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

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

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

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

That ought to keep everybody happy!

Talk to Me !

Make a Copy?

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

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

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

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

(Takes deep breath)

“Ahh!”

Talk to Me !

Postal Mail-Outs – Do They Work?

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

Two weeks later I left a voicemail; no response.

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

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

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

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

Postal Mail-Outs – Do They Work?

I can’t say for sure.

But it seems like they do.

Talk to Me !

How’s that Working for You?

I was stuck!

There I was, sitting with the Good Prospect at long last, and suddenly the conversation was flagging.

Worse, it seemed as if I was the one being interviewed, instead of me learning about my prospect’s needs and pain.

I was desperate to steer the conversation back to the prospect’s business, and ultimately, how I might be able to help them.

Suddenly I remembered Melvyn Bragg.

What are good questions to ask?

I listen to BBC podcasts of Melvyn Bragg: In Our Time ; they are jolly, and jolly interesting, but most of all, Melvyn asks questions that keep the conversation rolling.

I have noted some of his questions as the days roll by.

My list will be updated and taped above my phone, so I’ll have a series of prompts while I’m on the phone, to help me keep the conversation going.

Talk to Me !

P.S. Please see also “ Ping-Pong Conversations ”

P.P.S. Here are some examples of Melvyn’s questions:-

(1) What do we know of ...?

(2) Can you explain what you mean by ...?

(3) You mentioned ___. How did that arise?

(4) Can you explain what the position is ...?

(5) (Statement). Could you explain why that is?

(6) What do you mean by ...?

(7) Can we spend a moment discussing ...?

(8) Why is it so important that ...?

(9) How does this affect ...?

(10) How was that achieved?

(11) Why is that the case?

(12) For most of us that needs a little bit more explanation.

(13) How do you go about doing that?

(14) What did you get out of this?

(15) Who had expected (that)?

(16) Could you give me a bit more detail?

(17) Can you fill me in a little bit more about what they (neutrinos!) do?

(18) Can you bring me up to speed on ___?

(19) Why is it so (dramatic)?

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.

Talk to Me !

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?

Talk to Me !

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!

Talk to Me !

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, …

Talk to Me !

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!

Talk to Me !

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

Talk to Me !

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

Talk to Me !

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!