Time for Myself

As a result of the truncated meeting I had an extra half-hour to kill, over and above the buffer I'd built in to my schedule.

This is a freebie to me.

Half an hour when I'm out of the apartment with nothing to do, no telephone calls to deal with, no email, just me.

I wandered back into the subway station and took a 10-minute trip eastwards towards downtown, getting off at Bathurst station; there is a bakery right there in the station - no need to use an extra ticket - and they sell cheese croissants. I know, because I treated myself to one, got on the next westbound train, and read more of my book.

On the bus between the subway and my next appointment, I did what I hate other people doing - whipped out my cell phone - but only to collect voice mail messages.

One

From Andy Szego of Premiere System Solutions . I have known Andy for about 18 years, and once bought a portable computer from him. He saved my bacon.

Andy left a voice-mail "I might have a lead for some work for you", so the sour taste of my 'failed demonstration' was replaced by the sweet anticipation of learning about the new lead, once I got through the next appointment.

Sure enough, a good lead, with a warm and friendly prospect.

The emails have been exchanged, a draft specification is sent out. Today comes the discussion by phone and, I hope, issuance of another proposal which OUGHT to result in quick delivery of a cheque.

What a day!

Piggy-Backing

Here is the power of adding yourself to a roster of speakers, writers, bloggers and so on:

I approached Enterprise Toronto and said I’d like to speak.

They accepted me

Yesterday (16th December) Enterprise Toronto posted an announcement on their web site about my scheduled talk.

Today (Thursday, December 17, 2009) Google Web Alert notified me that I had been found, that is, that Google has indexed the page.

Enterprise Toronto has better SEO than I (or perhaps they pay Google), but by getting onto their site I am more visible to web browsers.

Of course, it is not that people go searching for “Chris Greaves Toronto”, but when they go searching for “simple and practical processes to take you from the initial telephone call all the way to receipt of a cheque. Using sample email conversations, participants will compose a structured proposal by following basic mechanical procedures”, the theory is they will find the announcement and come to hear me speak.

And yes, I have invested time and effort getting to this point, but by piggy-backing on Enterprise Toronto, ITWorld Canada and others, I get more recognition for free.

Today: Published by The Examiner.

Power-Less Over Presentations

As I walked to the prospect's office, I thought "What am I doing here?". I had set up a meeting to demonstrate my text-processing wizardry to a graphics consulting firm. They don't use Intel-Windows, they use Macs. Who knows if my Word 2000 templates would ever run successfully, even if I could convince the owner of my value.

"Hi!" and into the boardroom. Out of the bag comes my trusty Intel/Windows laptop, the mouse, and no power-block. The power-block is in my office five miles away.

Oops!

Hi. I'm a computer expert, and I left the power-block at home. And the battery has been unchargeable for over a year.

The good news is that I had brought with me two copies of a 1-sheet handout, a script for the demonstration I had planned, AND part of it was in colored characters to demonstrate my Color macros.

"If it ain't written down, it don't exist". So true!

Armed then with a 1-sheet handout, my dulcet tones, much hand-waving, and a brilliant and attentive (and very forgiving owner of a Graphics Design company) I delivered a truncated 20-minute version of my 15-minute hands-on demonstration.

She believed my figures, I think, but there's no substitute fro seeing an index appear before your eyes in 15 seconds (nominally a 2- to 3-hour manual task).

She did ask me about document conversion, and did show me some manuals they had prepared, and did mentions that they might need help with document cleansing and table manipulation (I do those!), so I can follow-up with some future benefits.

And best of all - I had a meeting with a prospect, someone I'd been referred to by a colleague I'd not met, and I did a demonstration, of sorts.

I should get out more.

I did, and it was a good step in the right direction.

The journey is long, but interesting.

Scamming for the FREE Lunch

I am indebted to Mike Fedryk for this flash of insight.

I've been running The Prospector service for two months now.

Very nicely, thank you!

The biggest problem with The prospector is obtaining feedback from the subscribers. I am essaying with a points-based system - snakes-and-ladders idea.

Everyone starts off with 100 points (think "Monopoly Money"), and loses 5 points if the constraints are too slack, and gains 30 points if they submit feedback that allows me to tweak their constraints to deliver a better fit.

Mike's email says in part "This one's a good hit..." and that comment arrives because Mike has been diligent in tweaking his constraints.

The biggest problem in building my business is setting up face-to-face meetings with prospects or contacts.

So my latest scam^H^H^H^H scheme says:-

P.S. When your account balance reaches 200 points you win a free lunch at The Montreal Deli, did I tell you that? (Dundas street 1/2 mile west of Highway 427).

The theory is that it will be next-to-impossible for most subscribers to fail to reach that goal, in which case whoop-de-do!, they have effectively offered to meet me for lunch!

Thanks Mike.

Resolutions

This time of year I get asked if I've made any New Year's Resolutions.

I answer "No!"

I figure that the word resolution means a re-solution, another look at the solution.

That means I already know the solution, but I haven't implemented it.

November is a good time to say "My New Year's Resolution is to eat more fruit (bran, greens, etc,)"; or exercise each day, whatever.

But if eating fruit is going to be good for me next January, why wouldn't it be good for me this November? Likewise a 30-minute walk three times a week? Or quitting smoking? Or talking with newcomers? Or getting to more networking meetings? Or taking my mentors' advice.

If today I know the solution, today is probably a good time to start putting it into effect. It's not too late in the day to write a business plan.

A resolution is a convenient way of putting off the action until tomorrow; that's procrastination.

My mentor tells me that's deadly.

What are your New Year's Resolutions, and would your life have been better if you'd implemented them last May?

The Delight of Deletion

About four months ago I embarked on a campaign to eliminate many/most of my existing contacts on my contact list. ("Getting Rid of Contacts").

After one month I found that most of them were gone. My target market is NOT the 2-man legal firm on The Danforth at Coxwell.

Yesterday I made a follow-up call to an email I'd sent two weeks ago.

Got the Gatekeeper; Brian is in a meeting, what's this about?

I've learned from gurus that I am NOT to sell to the Gatekeeper; my business with Brian is none of their business; my business with the Gatekeeper is to learn when might be a good time to call back.

Brian called back 15 minutes later, tore a strip off me for being rude to the gatekeeper (I wasn't rude, but her perception of my refusal to publicize my private business was that I was rude).

We got over that.

I cleared my throat and began with my lead sentence, but Brian interrupted me telling me we had spoken about that two weeks ago.

I learn from gurus how to "handle objections", so I agreed with Brian and explained that I was making a follow-up call on my email which, Brian interrupted to tell me, I'd promised to send but didn't send.

Off the phone I checked my records.

Management measures!

On Tuesday the 17th, just two weeks before, we chatted for less than 7 minutes and I issued an email to the address he had requested.

I am fairly sure I know what happened:

(1) Brian has someone vet all email that goes through the info@ address

(2) He treats with disdain any email that arrives at the info@ address

(3) He hires his wife as receptionist, and rises to her defense whenever she is upset.

I also know that

(4) I deleted him from my contact list.

I'm not looking to do business with prospects who can't communicate; after all, suppose I got a contract. What do you suppose it would be like trying to communicate specifications?

Tim Hortons

(An open letter to Tim Hortons)

At around 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, December 9, 2009, accompanied by a friend, I entered the Tim Hortons coffee shop on The West Mall, just south of Dundas Street.

Neither I nor my friend had been in the shop for the past 18 months.

The greeting I received shocked me to the extent that it has taken me two days to get around to write about it; I have been too busy telling my friends and colleagues of my experience.

The lady behind the counter greeted us both with "Long time no see"; we responded along the lines of "Well, yes".

Your representative then looked me in the eye and said "Mocha, medium, right?"

I could only nod, and was still silent (a rare event in my life) when your representative returned with the Mocha, medium, and said "No lid, right?".

Words fail me.

But perhaps you can convey to your staff the impact this greeting has had on me.

Is Vanity all that Bad?

I have felt for a long time that vanity plates on cars serve only to make it easy to remember the license plate of an idiot driver. I mean, if you insist on weaving in and out of traffic, don't use a car registered as "IAM-CRAZY" or similar. Use "374 SDF" or something similarly innocuous.

I am feeling less and less enthusiastic about vanity phone numbers.

A web site gives out its phone number as (area code) (exchange code) 2CLS.

I am expected to squint at the tiny letters on the telephone handset and do the mental brainwork to translate CLS into 257.

"Hate the Work; Love the Money", That's My Motto.

So I dial the number, and what do you know? Somewhere along the line I manage to transcribe a "2" and a "5", or it might have been a "7".

I get a wrong number, which causes confusion on the other end and leaves a bad taste in my mouth; I don't like disturbing people needlessly.

I will try again and with a bit of luck, make contact with my original goal.

But in the time it takes to type this article, I may lose interest.

My workshop on Business Cards leads off with "The primary purpose of the business card is to get the other person to phone you", and following from that, ANYTHING which distracts is working against you.

(I once delivered the workshop, waiting until the end until someone asked "So what does YOUR business card look like?", whereupon I pulled out a card that had "416-621-9458" in 48-pt, front and back, nothing else at all. Think about that).

The Same Rule Ought to Hold for Web Sites and Flyers.

Once they land on your web page, let them know your phone number.

Not your phone letters.

And certainly don't brag about having discovered how to erect another hurdle between you and the next sale.

Let Your Brand Trash Your Elevator Speech

Let Your Brand Trash Your Elevator Speech

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

So there I was waiting for my turn to give the elevator speech; my mind went blank. One by one people stood, delivered and sat down.

I didn't hear a word they said.

What IS my elevator speech?

As panic set in, I circled the many, many things I am capable of doing well, most of them unlinked to one another.

Excepting that I do them all very well.

I have read George Torok's article in the September 2009 edition of Enterprise magazine, and am rethinking my brand along the lines of "Cheerful, laughter, Positive, The answer is always YES, Let's do it", and so on. That, I think, is a client's gut feel about me.

My Turn to Stand up

I can't remember what I said.

I mentioned nothing about Indxr, Prospector, my technical wizardry.

I think I was a bubbling enthusiastic guy in a gray shirt and a pink tie and a gray jacket with pink flecks who had been mentioned by two other attendees, and who stood up cheerful and laughing and was quite obviously the guy having the most fun of everybody.

Worth Checking Out.

I made four super-strong contacts last night.

Go figure

Don't Just Sit There - S.I.T!

This came up at a recent lunch with two colleagues.

We discussed those days and times when we just didn't seem to feel like phoning; we got around to the types of phone calls, and all the usual stuff, when Jim announced "Don't just sit there - Stay In Touch";

I came back to the office and found a printed copy of ComputerWorld Canada sitting on my doorstep, with this excellent networking article by Mark Jeffries:

The 3 R’s of networking

What a co-incident!

Do You Need to Know this?

I have been reading emails and junk flyers.

Also I read Are Your Headlines Missing These Precise Psychological Triggers? .

The headline above is the culmination of my studies.

In the simplest form, a headline or subject should have a Question, a Problem, and Curiosity.

Over supper I took out a piece of paper and a pencil and drafted these headlines:

• Effort 1: What do you have to lose if you don't read this? (11 words!)
• Effort 2: What might you lose by not reading this? (8 words)
• Effort 3: What might you gain by reading this? (7 words)
• Effort 4: How did I know you would read this? (8 words)
• Effort 5: How well do I know you? (6 words)
• Effort 6: Do you need to know this? (6 words.)

I don't know how Effort 3 slipped in; it has no problem or pain; it implies a problem or pain in a negative sense, but that forces the reader to think, and I don't want the headline/subject reader to think; I want them to ACT.

Efforts 1 & 2 were truly top-of-my-head.

4, 5 and 6 dropped on to the paper as generalized questions, and I tried to reduce their lengths.

6 words is, I think, digestible.

This whole drafting exercise took less than 5 minutes.

So What?

I could go back over my earlier blogs and re-jig each subject into a question.

Really all I need do is super-glue a question-mark to the end of the subject, and then adjust the grammar so that it becomes a question.

That's 1 out of 3 fixes in place.

I need to re-phrase one part of the subject so that it becomes a problem or a source of pain.

That's 2 out of 3 fixes in place.

I need to include a word or phrase that induces curiosity. I am told that words like "this" and 'these" are good, because they specify SOMETHING is available without revealing what it is.

That's 3 out of 3 fixes in place.

"This" is therefore more powerful than "This Idea"; readers may decide that they don't want any more ideas, and the headline "This Idea" tells them that there's no need to read the email, whereas "This" tells them they need to open the email to see if they needed to open the email. Subtle, huh?

So When?

So from now on, every email I send out, every essay I write, I should spend AT LEAST 60 seconds making sure I have at least (1) a question (2) a problem (3) curiosity.

Otherwise I'm wasting my time.

And yours.

On the Buses

So, take a PrtScr snapshot of your InBox, print it, and take that sheet of paper with you on the bus, or to the next boring presentation.

I have found it to be a fun exercise.

So can you.

And we will all be better for it.

What's the Benefit of Having this Contact on My List?

The theory is that every contact on my list is someone with whom I can do business; specifically, I believe that at some near point in the future, I will be able to convince them to part with money in exchange for a benefit I offer.

I believe that for this to happen, the contact will need an previously-established belief that I can fulfill the promise to bring benefit to them.

It follows that if I have a good track-record of bringing benefits to them, they are more likely to have established belief that I can fulfill the promise to bring benefit to them.

How do I establish a good track-record of bringing benefits to them?

By bringing benefits to them over a period of time; this period is, I think, known as "Establishing the Relationship".

We see now that if I can contact the person six or twelve times a year with small gifts that benefit the contact, I will have established in them the belief that I can fulfill the promise to bring benefit to them.

(Getting there!)

So here I am, staring at a contact record in my database, wondering what the heck I can bring to them this week as a small gift to add to the gifts I have not yet been able to bring to them.

That's right.

Two years on my contact list and I haven't stumbled across anything in all my reading and browsing that could be of interest to them.

Perhaps we really have nothing in common at all.

Hard to believe, but compare that with my track-record with my fellow networking entrepreneurs: we phone each other at least once a week ( Have You Forgotten This? ). They and I swap articles, news, ideas, jokes, chat by phone; we brag, we cry. We have a great deal in common.

Truth is, if I have been unable to find any snippets of information that might benefit this contact, then I am unlikely to establish a good track-record of bringing benefits to them.

And that means that that at no time in the future am I likely to convince them to part with money in exchange for a benefit I offer.

I should remove them from my list and stop wasting BOTH our times.

A no-nym, us!

Or if you prefer, anonymous.

I am scanning web pages looking for independent trainers in Communications skills and am amazed at the number of sites for small firms that do not provide a name.

Too many of them provide a form, but no email address.

I find this odd.

If I am looking for a personal trainer, then I want to know a bit about them.

I find that I am most enthusiastic when

(1) There is a personal name (I can introduce myself on the first call)

(2) There is a personal photo (I can "see" who I am talking with

(3) There is a real-live telephone number

(4) There is a bricks-and-mortar street address

Good Examples abound:

http://www.oomphgroup.com/index.cfm?pagepath=About_Us/Who_We_Are&id=5622

http://www.forrestandco.com/forrest/contact1.asp

http://www.bluepointleadership.com/aboutus/team-bios.htm

http://www.theesource.com/esourcelanding/default.aspx?consultant=wmann

In most cases you have to jump about the web site to get the full details, but at least they are there.

Bad examples abound

But I'm not going to embarrass them here.

P.S.

I always get a warm reception when I make the first call by phone and ask for permission to send a one-time email.

• I am not fooling anyone, and no one is fooled by it.
• If the emailed-proposition is attractive, communication will follow naturally.
• If not, I must stick to my word and not send another email.

Unless something radically new crops up and then I should ask again.

Why Are You Struggling With Your Elevator Speech

I am indebted to Michelle Romanica for this flash of insight.

We were discussing Elevator Speeches when it dawned on me that I'd had about 20 of them in use over the past 20 years.

• People and Computers
• Changing the Way People Think
• Inspiring People to Perform At Their Best
• Applications that Work Right the First Time, On Time, Every Time.
• If I Can't Save Your Company the Cost of My Consultation on My First Visit, the Consultation is Free.
• Packaged Solutions
• Reliable, Sustainable Applications for You
• Better Documents Faster
• If You Have Enough Experience, You Don't Need Me; If You Don't, YOU DO!
• Learn, to Earn, And Learn to Earn
• If You're Having a Problem, That's MY Problem

My latest is roughly:

• I Squeeze Dollars Out of Your Existing Assets and Resources By the Application of Training and Programs

I said Rough; it needs work.

And that’s the point.

I have changed over the past 20 years.

• As has the market.
• As has my target market.
• As have my skills.

As soon as I perfect a speech, it steps aside for the next wave.

So What?

I used to think that the Elevator Speech was supposed to get me a job, or at least a contract.

Not so.

The Elevator Speech’s sole purpose is to get the other person interested enough to ask you a question.

Providing that the response isn’t ‘That’s nonsense’, almost any response is good:

• What do you mean by that?
• How do you do that?
• How would that affect me?
• What kind of Assets?
• What kind of Resources?
• What kind of Training?
• What kind of Programs?

At a networking meeting, if I do it right, I will engage another person in dialogue for five minutes, ten tops, collect a card, and a few days later come up with a good reason why we should do coffee.

And if that goes well, coffee a few weeks later.

Maybe after that, an idea for co-operative business, or a good lead or referral.

Or a chance for me to offer a small freebie to strengthen the relationship.

But no job.

Not directly from the elevator speech.

Some of my best jobs have come long after the initial Elevator Speech has ridden off into the sunset.

Thanks Michelle.

Supply and Demand

I was at a technical networking meeting last night. Towards the end the conversation turned towards a plaintive bleat from a Systems Programmer that IBM was undercutting hourly rates.

I can remember when a Systems Programmer was King-of-the-Heap and we computer programmers were mere underlings.

I can remember when programmers were thought to be more brilliant than mathematicians, because programmers could understand computers and make them “do” things, such as playing a tune on an IBM 1403 line printer.

I can remember getting paid about $250 per day to deliver training in desktop applications fifteen years ago.

I can remember ten years ago Nortel laying off staff in 40,000 chunks of people.

I can remember thinking that that meant 20,000 people saying “I’ve been using Microsoft Word for years; I could teach it”, and armed with a two-year severance package and by moving back in with Mum and Dad, they could afford to undercut my rates horribly.

I can remember deciding to get out and carve a little niche in Really Advanced desktop training, including Application Development, and making myself available as an independent instructor at $1,000/day regardless of class size.

Today’s systems – from micro through mini to mainframe – deliver more power with less maintenance and operation.

I’m not surprised that the demand for Systems programmers has shrunk.

I am surprised to hear supposedly-brilliant people complaining about it.

I remember shaking hands with a blacksmith last week. He’s the only blacksmith I know.

Works out at the Woodbine Racetrack shoeing racing horses for owners and trainers.

How to Price an “Inexpensive” Proposal for a Client

You’ve had this happen to you: A prospect phones with a request “Can you do this job?”; of course you can. The answer is always “Yes”.

You know that they are going to ask for your price right there on the phone, but you don’t even want to guess at a price until you’ve learned much more about the job.

Then Bingo! The prospect casually mentions that they are looking for an inexpensive solution.

Just as casually ask the prospect what kind of solutions they have already found, and you’ll hear “Oh, we found one form that would download the data for us at about $500 per shot”.

Especially if you are broke and need the rent money, you are going to grab this project. It is more work than $500, to be sure, but you can explain now or later that as a first-time client you have an introductory offer.

In my case I figured that the prospect wasn’t all that happy with the data source, since $500 seems like a pretty good deal to me, so that my selling point was me; the price had to be around $500, not $2,000, but as long as I kept my nose clean, I’d get the business.

We chatted a bit more, I made notes and said I would issue a questionnaire. Within an hour the questionnaire was back.

It was a piece of cake to put together a proposal for $550 based on the prospects hand-written answers to my questionnaire, print off a copy, and break for lunch.

Fifteen minutes later I proof-read the proposal and email it off.

Now I wait

I have been able to satisfy myself that I can do the job, and the $550 will be more welcome than the $0 that was in the pipeline first thing this morning.

I took Dean Rieck’s advice and sprinkled some candy on top of the proposal.

In this case pricing was easy. I pretty well matched the outside offer (that probably didn’t even get to the proposal stage) and added all my personal touches (lifetime support, extra runs for a small fee, and so on).

And I didn’t get asked what I would charge either.

I hate that kind of question

Marketing Metrics

My weight-loss method notwithstanding, I have hit on a revolutionary scheme to measure my marketing efforts.

One of my tactics is to ‘touch’ my contacts with a phone call.

Like many entrepreneurs, the thought of interrupting someone at their work scares me, but the prospect of going broke scares me even more.

Rick Shea of Optiv8 says that I need to know how each of my marketing tactics works.

Management Measures

I’ve tried making penciled tally-marks on a sheet of paper, but all too often I reach for the phone and forget to tally.

Here’s the scheme:

I place an empty glass jar to the left of telephone.

I place a tiny bowl of nickels to the right of the telephone.

When I reach for the telephone, I can’t help but see the jar and bowl.

I move a nickel from the easy-to-access bowl into the jar, and make the phone call.

If by the end of the day I have enough money for an ice-cream, I shall walk across the street to McDonalds .

Regardless of the outcome, at the start of the next day, all the nickels go back into the bowl.

Contact www.ChrisGreaves.com for this image! MarketingMetrics_GEDC0006.JPG

Here’s a photo of my setup; the phone sits IN the jar, which is an added reminder.


And yes, those are ½ inch washers in the bowl. You don’t expect me to use real nickels on the web, do you?

No accruals! That’s the rule.

P.S. If you have REAL trouble getting started with phone calls, start this scheme with two-dollar coins the first day, dollars the second, quarters the third, dimes the fourth, and settle down into nickels on the fifth day.

Be Nice to Yourself.

P.P.S. I suppose I could extend the scheme to a slab of Brie from Bruno ’s on those days when I email out a proposal.

P.P.P.S Let’s be clear about this: If your stumbling-block is picking up the phone to place a call, move the nickel AS you pick up the phone. It matters not that you got a recording and decided not to leave a message. What matters is that you PICKED UP THE PHONE and were willing to engage in conversation.

P.P.P.P.S You can measure several metrics at once by using, say, nickels for outgoing calls, dime for incoming calls – you get double-points if your outgoing calls result in a call back to you! Try a $5 note for every proposal you are invited to send out, $10 per invoice.

You get the idea ….

Why the Pressure from Scripts?

Another day, another script-set (a) If they pick up the phone (b) if I get voice-mail (c) if I get a receptionist (d) if I get put through to sales, and so on.

I still feel new enough that I edit a previous script, and type in the real name, the real phone number, “star” to use the directory and even the digits that correspond to the person’s name – I am not so good at locating the tiny letters on the phone.

I am suddenly aware that I am using solvent to wipe some erasable marker ink from my whiteboard.

Why Am I Doing this?

I am supposed to be phoning.

I suspect that I am putting myself under too much pressure.

This phone call isn’t going to make or break me – I’m already broke.

I suspect that I am treating this as the most important phone call of the year.

It is

And it isn’t.

It is vitally important that I make this call, but, the outcome of the call is unlikely to have an immediate impact on my business.

I Settle on a New Perspective

The outcome of this call is going to give me an immediate benefit; immediate feedback on how well my scripts are coming along.

With this in mind, I make a few changes to the script, print out a fresh copy, read it out aloud to see how comfortable I am with it, pencil in a couple of changes …

… And make the call.

It Went Quite Well; Thank You for Asking

Small Steps

Ever since before I can remember, small steps got me somewhere. I crawled, I toddled, I walked, I ran, I bicycled (long distances, for years), and each journey was a series of foot-steps – on the carpet, down the garden-path, on the bike pedals.

It took me fifty years to travel around the world (England to Australia in 1956, Australia to Canada in 1980, Canada to England in 2005) and each leg (sorry!) of the journey was memorable.

This morning I received an email from Jack with 3 attached PDF files; “Read the attached material and call me later in the week”.

This in response to an article I emailed to him about his company for publication in an online newspaper blog, to which I was invited to contribute.

The invitation to contribute coming after I’d posted a Letter-to-the-Editor.

Those three legs encompass about 20 small steps such as “Chat with Jack and learn that he has a distributed office”, “Sketch out the article”; “Call Jack back and ask for more details”, and so on.

I do not know if business will arise from all of this; I hope it does.

But I do know that every day must be spent taking steps along the path, or paths, with each Contact, Client and Colleague.

Have You Forgotten This?

I had!

I’d got my contacts list all cleaned up, and the “follow-up” mechanism working just fine, thank you.

Each morning an on-screen list of who-I-should-touch-today, and at the end of the day a satisfying feeling that I was keeping in touch with my contacts on a monthly basis rather than just sending them a card at Christmas time.

Then it dawned on me – at least one of my small group of peer-to-peer net workers was NOT on my contacts list?

Why Not?

Probably because we had met, quickly corresponded by phone and email several times in the first week and in subsequent weeks had started to work together on boosting our visibility to our target markets.

Stop Reading - and Do this Now:

Paper-and-pencil time.

Write down the names of those you consider to be your pals in the world of the Transitional Entrepreneur.

Like this:

David
Jim
Julia
Cheryl
Rick
Michelle
Cathy
Ken

Who are these people? These people are the ones you call, and will continue to call, when you have a question about what you need to do next, when you question your sanity, when you need a shoulder to cry on, when you need to celebrate landing that $US6,872 contract and the cheque arrives.

I have eight entrepreneurs on my list; three of them are suppliers (I have paid them small sums of money in the past for goods and services); one of them is new to me, but has already proven himself as a valuable source of ideas for marketing; one is in a business so radically different from mine, and yet we share her passion for her work and have done for over seven years.

Don’t sweat the accuracy, but if you don’t have at least 5 names on your list, go find some more “family”, and if you have more than 10 names on your list, think carefully.

This is not a list of people I enjoy chatting with at, and in between networking events.

This is a list of people who are gradually getting to know me in quite a personal way; people who learn that I can’t afford to pay for lunch this week; people who I trust to read through my confidential pricing in the proposals.

What to Do Next?

Check that each of these precious people are on your contact list, and that the follow-up date is not more than two weeks away.

I am suggesting that this small group of familiar people represents your first circle of valuable contacts, and more than anyone else they are out there pounding, as we say in the trade, the pavement - keeping their ears open for opportunities for YOU.

You owe it to them to feed them snippets of useful information, useful to THEM.

At least once a fortnight.

And it need not be an extensive email dialogue. It’ll be enough that they get a truly useful link to an article or a gadget, or a possibility of a new contact for them.

It better be valuable; it better be free; and it better be directly useful to them.

They deserve it.

They are your family.