Who is this Guy Chris Greaves? -2

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

I have re-issued the search with these results:

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

The results can be summarized as follows

Name Only	& Toronto	& Mississauga
4 out 7 or 57%	10 out of 10 or 100%	Top 6 out of 10 or 60%

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

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

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

It’s a process, not an act!

Talk to Me !

Management Measures Supplies

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

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

Inside we have one face per month.

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

Example 1:

Note the date of replacement of each printer cartridge.

Example 2:

Note the quantity of postage stamps at each purchase

Example 3:

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

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

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

Talk to Me !

Boosting My LinkedIn Connections

So by now most members of my contact list have received a phone call and two postal mailings from me; many have lunched with me.

I’d like to connect to them in LinkedIn.

LinkedIn requires I know something about a person before I can issue an invitation.

Something like their email address.

Heh heh!

The email address that The Prospector hands to me on a plate each morning.

I might set up a query in Access that throws up records which

(1) indicate that I am not yet Linked In and

(2) have a valid email address.

It’s a start!

The Database

.. will need a field that tells me whether

(1) I have asked for a connection (“A”)

(2) I have made a connection (“M”)

A better scheme might be

(1) The date on which I last asked for a connection

(2) I have made a connection (“M”)

With a date value I can revisit records in a decent sequence.

The Query

... would show those active records for which the status field does NOT read “M”, in ascending date sequence.

A simpler scheme would set the date to be in the year 2099 once I’d made a connection.

Or three years ahead so that I can “renew our vows”!

Talk to Me !

Just Call Them up!

It’s been 6 weeks since the firm has sent me any pick-up work writing Word/VBA code, and frankly I’m worried that I’ve said or done something wrong.

It’s been bugging me.

This form is not known for its great corporate communications. It is quite possible that someone, somehow, has taken offence and no one can be bothered telling me the gig is over.

A good friend has been bugging me ‘So, call them and find out!”.

I’ve been too scared.

What if they don’t want me any more?

Finally logic kicks in.

You Know What?

If they really are through with me, it’ll come out in the first 60 seconds, and I can say, calmly and politely “Thank you for letting me know”, and there’s an end to it.

If, on the other hand, it’s just a seasonal slow-down, then I can sleep again at night time.

I Called

It’s a seasonal slow-down. School started up yesterday; everybody’s back from vacation, ...

Talk to Me !

Staying Ahead of the Avalanche

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

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

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

Why Not?

Management Measures.

It’s time for some figures.

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

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

I have 340 personal contacts on this list.

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

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

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

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

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

I Work in Spurts

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

The other spurt averaged 36 contacts per week, too.

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

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

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

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

A New Goal

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

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

I need to double that to 8 per day.

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

Catching Up

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

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

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

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

Talk to Me!

Check Your Stress At the Gasoline Pump

We met for the last time in a Tim Horton’s coffee shop near Lawrence and Victoria Park Avenue.

The meeting lasted an hour and ended when I got up and walked away. I’ve met her only once since then, ten years ago.

At the time I ran a car, and recorded my odometer reading each time I bought gasoline, recording also what I’d paid and the price per litre.

I charted my consumption, and interesting it was, too, for in those days I did some long distance trips as a relief for all the scooting around town delivering training.

I knew that the breakup was coming; tension was in the air each time we met.

I knew I had to end the relationship, but I didn’t know how.

Walking stiff-legged out of the coffee shop was not the kindest thing I’ve done, but it might have been the smartest.

Two years later I was using my gas readings as exercise data in class.

“Chris, why is there a peak there?’ came the question.

The peak in gasoline consumption reflects that in the weeks leading up to the breakup I was under stress.

When we are under stress we drive erratically; I’d been braking more, accelerating with ferocity, and I suppose generally behaving like an ape behind the wheel.

It’s hard to see in the image above, but in the two weeks immediately after the breakup, my gas consumption began to come down, and after two weeks, it plummeted down to its usual level.

I reason that the first two weeks after the breakup saw some stress shed from my life, but at the two-week point I KNEW she was gone, and the load dropped off like a sack of stones.

Record your gasoline consumption and plot the trend.

Then go back to those peaks and work out what it is that causes you stress.

And get rid of it.

Talk to Me !