Best Compliment this Week

Yesterday during one of my follow-up telephone calls I was paid a compliment.

I was told that my follow-up methods were excellent, my sales manner top-class, and my telephone skills impeccable, or words to that effect. I can't remember the precise words, but those three areas were singled out.

By an Internet Marketing Guru, No Less.

Now an internet marketing guru may be an internet marketing guru because he knows he lacks telephonic skills, but still I am delighted to receive the compliment.

The guru went on to suggest a meeting where we might see if my skills could be applied to his business. The future looks bright.

But that's the future, and today is another day. Today I have to make a sale.

Today's phone calls will be easier because of yesterday's compliment; that compliment will give me the courage to assert my business throughout the day, and establish myself more firmly in people's mind.

Makes me wonder how my day would be if every phone call I made included the act of me complimenting my contact, on a smooth web site, a great business, a friendly receptionist, whatever, as long as it is a sincere compliment.

Why Are Testimonials Awkward to Write?

I've been asked to write two testimonials over the past 3 days.

It took me 10 minutes to write one, and I'm struggling with the second. Why?

In both cases my suppliers made me look good by their extra efforts. In both cases I am, and would be, delighted to discuss my statements over the phone.

Do You Find it Difficult to Write a Testimonial?

I'm not talking about the letter-to-head-office when you receive great service at a hotel or restaurant chain - those are straightforward and necessary.

I'm talking about the one-on-one business you do with fellow entrepreneurs.

My "difficult" case is the person who laid me before the feet of the Microsoft Board of Directors.

Quick now: When did anyone present YOU to the Microsoft Board of Directors? I thought not.

So why is it so difficult to get finished?

We Have Five Fingers on Each Hand

It is early morning as I type. I am tempted to write another list. There is a rent cheque to be processed, two vital phone calls to make, a problem list to be updated, two technical issues to be resolved, .... plus my regular business-marketing tasks.

If I write a list it will bloom to 20 items within 60 seconds, and I'll not get them all done, and I'll feel bad at the end of the day.

I don't believe our brains have evolved to cope with 20. not really.

• I can count to 20.
• I can count to 100.
• I can estimate the number of navy beans held in the cup of my hand.
• But my brain can cope with five, maybe seven. Ten at most.

And when we are talking critical tasks, forget ten. My brain is too occupied with "emergency" to worry about 10.

My best strategy is to write down 4 tasks one on each of 4 blank business cards, and get those 4 done.

Perhaps by lunchtime I'll feel so good at completing my Urgent List that I'll be able to get 6 more done after lunch; but that will be a set of 4, followed by a set of 6, not a set of 10.

If I don't complete that second set, I will retain the feeling of success at completing my first set, completely!

We Live in a Village of 200 Souls

We humans have evolved, and that part of us known as "the brain" has evolved.

We have evolved to deal with 200 people, tops.

I watch with amazement the brags about having "four thousand Twitter followers" or "four thousand friends on FaceBook", or even "four million hits on my YouTube vide", and known that in terms of friendship it counts for nothing.

Literally nothing.

The only thing that 4,000 or 4,000,000 can do for you is present you with the opportunity to make $5.00 off each of them and become financially well-off, a goal to which I aspire.

But don't confuse that with friendship.

I shop at No Frills supermarkets, but have never chatted with any one of the managers; I am one of the 4,000 shoppers who stream through the door each day.

I shop at Big Barn bulk outlets, but with one exception have never chatted with any one of the managers; I am one of the 4,00 shoppers who stream through the door each day.

I view YouTube videos of Rowan Atkinson or John Cleese but have never met either of them - to my deep regret - nor chatted, even by phone, with any of the people who have uploaded the videos.

They and I are nameless and faceless blobs of protoplasm who happen to be husbanding a share of the planet's total available biomass.

I don't have 200 friends, either.

I *might* be able, after much thought, to write up a list of 100 people who I can recognize by face AND put a name to them within five minutes; I doubt I can do 200.

My village includes my sister in Queensland, Franky and George in Adelaide, five ladies at church who I greatly respect, and about 20 people who I meet at networking events and some of whom are always eager to grab a chance for a small Caesar salad at The Montreal Deli.

My village includes about 20 nameless people who are a part of my life - the Indian guy who runs the dollar store across the street, the waitress at the burger joint up on Keele Street just south of Lawrence, ...

Challenge:

Next time you are waiting for the bus/train/plane to arrive or takeoff, try to write down 200 people in your village. I bet you can't.

Now write down your friends, real friends.

Now write a list of those people you'd be willing to go to and beg a loan when you have trouble paying your rent.

See?

Where Do I Find the Time to Read a Book?

I don't.

I find the time to read at least 6 books at once.

I have a book (1) at the bedside, one (2) next to the couch where I take a tea-break, one (3) in the kitchen, one (4) on my office desk, one (5) in the bathroom. I have a small (5"x4") Shakespeare play, one of seven I picked up for $1 each a couple of years ago, and all but one over a hundred years old) (6) sitting in my jacket pocket.

There are books spread about the place on coffee-tables.

When I need to watch the pasta until it comes to the boil, I read a couple of pages.

When some one puts me on hold, I read a couple of pages.

While walking to and waiting for the bus, I read a couple of pages.

The local bus drivers offer me "a bookmark", but to everyone else they offer a transfer ticket. I've told them that going downtown (about an hour each way) is for me like attending two hours of evening class - but in the daytime. I'm early, or my contact is late, for the appointment? I don't get resentful: I read a couple of pages.

You would be amazed at how much I read in a week, a month, and I say that you'd be amazed because I'm willing to bet that you don't have at least 6 books, each one book marked, lying around your home.

Sprinkles - part 2

In Sprinkles - part 1 I suggested that you send off a $20 coupon with a thank you note.

Remembering that "Business is the exchange of two pieces of paper, one of which must be a cheque", and what a pain it is to trek off to Tim Horton's each time you want to send a Thank-You note, consider buying a half-dozen coupons all at once, and then you can pop them in the note without trekking through the snow.

Or better yet, pop one in the invoice that you mail out.

Your client will be doing business with you, whether they know it or not, and guilt will help them shove your invoice through the accounts-payable pipeline.

If it Ain't Written Down ...

Yesterday was installation day. I set off for a 3-hour on-site visit.

Armed with printed copies of my proposal and specifications.

I had already emailed an agenda that read:

1: Review proposal, terms, copyright, specifications.
2: Demonstrate on laptop.
3: Install on a local machine.
4: Run from memory key or spare folder.

I am prone to giving away too much, especially to businesses that rent or own large offices in warehouses, pay salaried receptionists, and have vacation and medical and pension benefits plans.

I invented another meeting at 5pm which would necessitate my leaving at 4pm, once the 3 hours were up.

My first item of business was NOT on the laptop, it was on the stapled specifications and proposal.

We skimmed through the proposal, allowing me to remind the client that while they had a site-wide license to install and use the code, they did not own the code, and had no license to unlock or reverse-engineer my efforts. I retain copyright to the code.

We skimmed through the specifications, allowing me to firm up in the client's mind that this was a first attempt at resolving their problems based on the one (!) sample document that had been afforded me, and based on my necessarily limited knowledge of their word-processing ability.

Then we ran the demos; then we discussed good vs. bad habits in Microsoft Word; then we installed (one problem there), then I left. At 3:58 p.m. after ostentatiously making a phone call on my cell phone.

And hurried off to my 5pm meeting, with Jupiter my cat, waiting patiently for me to return home for supper.

Early in the three hours, my contact started chatting and said "I like to talk", so I gently murmured "it's your dime", and watched 15 minutes slip away before steering us back to the tasks at hand. My commitment is to be there for 3 hours; if the client wants to chat instead of learning, that's their decision. A direct result of my stating the 3-hour on-site time-limit.

As questions arose, the contact commented that "this is a first stage, we will quickly get that matter into phase 2", so my review of the limitations of phase 1 paid off and I did not offer to "dash of a quick macro and email it to you".

The hard copy served me well; it held my generous and impetuous nature in check, guided us both for 3 hours, and appears to have left me clutching a fistful of change orders which translate directly into dollars.

Why I Read Books

Now that you have read just two pages in less than two minutes, please go back and re-read the bit about ""... attempts to reach the policy holder were fruitless". "letters" and "telephone" suggests a period of four weeks or more - but then TaDa! Why not ask around; after four weeks someone has seen or heard of a way to establish contact.

There follows a page that indicates that the salesman knows his material; figures are prepared. "Management Measures", and the salesman wants to be in control to make the sale; the salesman must manage the conversation, and that means measurements, in this case, numeric quantifiers.

Please re-read the last sentence of the paragraph at the head of the second page. "If I can stay under $100 that'd be OK". The client has stated a goal, out loud; all our hero must do is achieve that goal, not any other goal, the client's stated goal. At this point it matters not a whit which policy is sold; to make a sale our hero need only select the one that offers premiums that bring him under the $100 goal.

At the end of the second paragraph on that second page, client objections have died down. It is time to Close The Sale, and at the start of the third paragraph, our client pulls out a piece of paper. "If it ain't written down, it don't exist".

At the foot of the third paragraph a cheque is written. "Business is the exchange of two pieces of paper, one of which MUST be a cheque".

The deal is done.

So What's the Point?

Obviously I've bought myself a "How to Make Sales" self-help book for Christmas and I'm ploughing through it, right?

Wrong. As Richard Dawkins says "Utterly Wrong!".

I am half-way through a 400-page book.

In the flyleaf is written "Grandpa Xmas 87".

Not me.

My friend Betty's mother's husband, John, he who died some 14 years ago, and Mum has hung onto his books.

Mum passed away February 2009, and Betty knows I read books.

So amongst five cartons of books (four cartons of which I kept) is "Risky Business" by Rod McQueen; Macmillan 1985.

25 years later I am learning about selling myself as a consultant (and a whole lot of other stuff) from a book describing the Canadian Insurance Industry a quarter of a century ago.

For Free.

There Appears to Be Some Confusion

About four weeks ago, a lead developed quickly into a sale, and by "quickly" I mean from the first telephone contact at 10:00 a.m. to an issued proposal by 5:00 p.m.

Not a big job, $975 plus taxes, and to sweeten the deal, a $200 discount if the new client took the go-between to lunch. (It's a long drive to Richmond Hill if you don't run a car, and I've known Andy for twenty years).

Turns out that the contact can't cut a cheque, the manager has to do that, but what with it being a budget term proposal (under $1,000 and expires in a week) it expired before the cheque was actually emailed to me.

I called, and re-issued the proposal, valid for another week, this time with an invoice which, with taxes, bloomed to $1,023.75 which is a long way from $775.00.

I heard nothing and had shrugged the deal off (although a follow-up call is planned), until yesterday, when a cheque for $813.75 appeared in my mail box.

Now that represents the original quote less the $200; in other words, the cheque is full payment for a deal which expired three weeks ago, and I have not heard back from Andy that he has been to lunch.

What to do?

I need the money, and I need the business; there's another 4 phases stretching down the highway, but my generous $200 discount was based on the premise that (a) Andy was taken to lunch that week and (b) the cheque was cut that week. Cash Flow, you might say.

1. I could sulk and return the cheque, but that behavior never did me much good, ever.

2. I could hold the cheque and wait until business opens its doors, telephone and have a business-like chat with the contact to sort things out. Could be acrimonious at this early stage; we do not have a long-term relationship as yet.

3. I could cash the cheque, say nothing (for now), and reflect that (a) I've got money that I wasn't going to have and (b) I operate independently and can get my $200 back in stages of $50 each added to each of the upcoming phases.

What would you do?

Sprinkles - Part 1

So you've got the cheque, the down-payment from the new client.

How do you say "Thank You"?

You write a hand-written note , with a hand-written envelope, and you use one of your custom postage stamps .

And you include a twenty-dollar gift certificate for Tim Hortons coffee shops, or whatever passes as a broadly-available service in your client's area.

Your client will think of you tomorrow when they open the note, and they'll think of you the next day when they line up for coffee.

If it's a long line-up, they'll probably mention you to the prospect/client they're standing with.

The Traditional West-End Solopreneur Christmas Get-Together

... was held this year at The Montreal Deli (*), my favorite watering hole.

I can't say I thought of it. Jim White and David Sappleton suggested the three of us meet over Christmas.

I went home and mulled over my situation - no family, no office party, and, feeling sorry for myself, invited everyone I knew, well, everyone who operates as or with a solo entrepreneur.

I recommend you try it as an exercise.

Don't wait for next Christmas.

There's nothing to organize.

Pick a diner where you are well-known, well enough for the staff to tolerate an indeterminate number of guests, well-enough that you can overflow to a second table if need be.

A place where one can order a stomach-filling plate of liver-and-onions or a dietary salad, or just a plate of French fries.

Team up with two other people who guarantee to be there, and the three of you make a good party; any extra attendees are the icing on the cake.

We learned lots, including:

1: When seven of you sit over coffee for three hours or more, each person gets a solid chunk of time to be interrogated in depth about what they do; the interrogation reveals more about them than any canned speech.

2: When seven of you sit over coffee for three hours or more, you get to form a deeper relationship than you will at a table at a networking meeting; you come away feeling that you KNOW someone.

3: Even though you email 52 people, the seven that show up are, by definition, the quality folks, those who are willing to spend some time broadening their range of resources and passing on useful help to other net workers.

4: Perhaps the best part: You don't need a speaker, a formal time, an RSVP, or any of that stuff.

Hang Tight!

Photos

(*)

"If it weren't for the great food, low cost, and excellent service, I couldn't be bothered coming here" (Chris Greaves 2001)

When 80% is Good Enough

I have been re-reading How to Write Magnetic Headlines , and if you haven’t read it, stop reading this now and go take a peak.

There is too much for me to take in at one sitting – it’s rather like the 100-pound box of chocolate mints I didn’t get for Christmas this year – but I don’t have to digest it all at once.

The ideas in the articles are better than anything I might come up with off the top of my shiny head.

Here’s the good news; I don’t have to be 100% perfect.

I don’t have to get the exercise 100% correct.

Getting 80% of the way is 70% better than my previous best.

I am known as a good writer, but I can’t claim to be good at writing headlines or subject-lines.

These guys are good at it, far better than I am now, and who knows? In a year’s time – or less if I am diligent – I’ll be better than them.

But right now I need to craft an email that will get people’s attentions.

And a headline that’s 80% perfect ought to have a better success rate than one that is only 10% effective.

So go mediocre, but go today, not tomorrow.

My 80% of today will be 81% tomorrow and 82% the day after. By the end of next week it will be 85% pushing 90%.

And starting at 80% is a lot better, faster, cheaper, and profitable than starting at, or worse, staying at 10%.

Where Did the Time Go?

A new year, right? Where did last year go?

For that matter, here it is Friday; next Monday everyone goes back to work, but in practice they'll all spend the day wading through a two-week backlog of voicemail and email.

So I will recommence phoning my contacts on Tuesday.

So I have left Saturday, Sunday and Monday to complete those tasks which I figured would easily be done over this two-week break.

OK, so I pretty well wrote off Tuesday December 29th . And spent Christmas day in bed reading books.

Luckily for me I have my own billing system that reports where my time went.

Luckily for you, you can see how you feel about keeping track of your time without downloading my system.

1: Open up Windows Notepad

2: On the first line type ".LOG" without the quotes.

3: Save the file in a regular folder (C:\Greaves\Admin\2010\ will do fine) with the name "201001.TXT"; that's the 4-digit year and the 2-digit month number.

4: Create a shortcut to this file on your Quick Launch bar.

When you sit down at the computer, click the icon and type in the client code and whatever you plan to do for them. If it is your own finances you're working on "Admin Month-end" will do. When I'm prospecting "Prospect" does me fine, as does "Phones" or "Email".

When I'm developing a template for Able Engineering "Able Template".

Close the file.

When the phone rings, click the icon before picking up the phone; the time is recorded. If it is a 2-minute lunch arrangement, close the file without saving; I don't track 2-minute phone calls. But if it is Able Engineering and a 20-minute discussion of the project, type "Able Phone" alongside the date/time from the file opening, and on the next line tap the F5 function key to record the end of the conversation.

At lunch time, click the icon and close the file.

You get the idea.

And if you don't, Talk to Me !

A Fake Snow Job

Now I don’t know about you, but I feel a bit ticked off at an email like this.

• It is personalized but not personal.
• It is timely but represents no time spent on it by the author.
• It is to me, but not about me.
• It touches me, but not at all in the way I like to be touched.

Indeed, I consider it to have wasted the time it took me to download it, open it, read it, and discard it.

In fact, I can delete the sender from my contact list in less time than that.

Nothing personal ...

Speaking Engagements

Every one is a speaker.

Every one speaks.

Some say they can’t do public speaking.

They are wrong.

When you sit across the table from your friend in a diner, you are speaking in public.

When four entrepreneurs share tales around a table in a diner, they are speaking in public.

When you deliver your 3-second elevator speech in an elevator, you are speaking in public.

I’ve been asked to prepare a list of topics on which I am prepared to address people.

Here it is . Although chances are strong that it will have grown by the time you read this.

What do you notice? That’s right, there’s an eclectic mix there. Stuff for you entrepreneurs; stuff for you domestic ecologists; stuff for those curious about turn-of-the-century engineering miracles in Australia, ...

Why?

Good as I am, I figure I need the practice, and if I can’t talk about how I’d like to make money, I can at least practice talking on some other subject.

So can you.

We are all expert on something.

Make a list.

Get out there!

How I Spend My Christmas

No, not Christmas Morning. (This year Christmas is being brought to me by the letter “C”: Camembert, Cookies, Chocolate, rollo iCe Cream, Cheese Croissants, a Carton of sugared Cereal; all those things I tend not to buy. In bed, with a good book)

Each year over the Christmas break I take the opportunity to rebuild my computers by reformatting the hard drive and re-installing the operating system and software.

It’s the only way I know to generate a pristine machine, free of all the residue of software I’ve tested over the past year.

Yes, I know about mirror images, but I don’t want a mirror-image of twelve months ago; I want a new machine loaded with the best of what I’ve evaluated and used over the latest 12 months learning cycle.

And yes, I backup my machines each night, and yes, my drives are partitioned into a program partition (15 gigabytes) and a data partition (85 gigabytes).

But what an opportunity to speed up my machines.

And what do I do while Windows XP is downloading the seemingly endless stream of updates?

I strip the deadwood from my paper filing system – folders for clients who didn’t materialize, notes from systems long abandoned – and I vacuum the balls of cat fur from behind the desk.

At the end of one day I’ve completed my annual housecleaning.

And sharpened all my pencils.

I sleep well that night.

This Technique Got Me Noticed!

The seasonal gap is upon us. Some businesses shut down over a week ago. Most are quiescent this week and next and part of the next.

What’s a sole entrepreneur to do, living alone, working out of a home offices. My peers agree that there isn’t much point in phoning contacts – their contacts are too busy prepping for their office party, and their client’s office parties.

While we poor foot-soldiers are left staring at the dust-bunnies.

Not this year

I harvested 52 names and email addresses from my contact list and issued a one-page html message to each one. You can read it here .

There is no agenda, no RSVP. It’s about as laid back as I ever get. David, Jim and Ken say they’ll be there; that’s enough for me. Four entrepreneurs around a table at the local diner for as long as we want.

Of course, if all 53 showed up I’d have some red-faced explaining to give the proprietors, but that’s unlikely to happen. Many people jet home to family, or just can’t be bothered.

But the residue will be the sticky ones, those of us who use this period for a massive cleanup and re-organization of ideas, and are looking for a place to share.

It’s the Tuesday, mid way between Christmas and New Year. We will all be glad for a chance to get out of the house, I know.

I have already been thanks for organizing this, but what’s to do? Twenty minutes grabbing email addresses, a one-off email.

I haven’t booked the diner; there’s nothing as bad as prepping them for 50 extra meals when only 4 show up. There’s no table to book, no cash outlay. No agenda, no speaker, nothing.

Just roll up

P.S. In case you are wondering about the East End get-together, I am just waiting for the first sucker to call me, and then TAG! They are IT! But Jim and David have already said they’d drive out there anyway, so that’d be at least another foursome around a table.

You just can’t lose in this game.

What the Gartner Group can Teach Us

I am reading a Gartner report - you've heard the name Gartner, even if you've never read a report.

It's OK. I'd not read a Gartner report until this afternoon.

I'm reading the report on QlikView , and if you aren't a registered subscriber (I'm not) you can't download it, but take my word for it, the report is structured roughly like this:
Strategy: We therefore rate the company’s strategy as a positive one.
Financial: We therefore rate the company’s financial viability as positive.
Marketing: etc.
Organization: etc.
Product/Service BI Platform: etc.
Technology/Methodology: etc.
Pricing Structure: etc.
Customer Service/Support: etc.

Here's what I learned by reading the report.

In each section, Gartner gives its reason for its rating, thus:

• The price point of QlikView licenses is considerably lower than the equivalent components of established BI platforms (around 50%). Uniquely, QlikTech remains the only BI vendor to offer a money-back guarantee. We therefore rate QlikTech's pricing structure as strong positive.

Now "Gartner, Inc. is the world's leading information technology research and advisory company. We deliver the technology-related insights necessary for our clients to make the right decisions, every day."

And they rate not only software (of deep interest to me), but also marketing, pricing and so on, which is of deep interest to all of us, no matter the size of our ship-of-entrepreneur.

If Gartner sees a money-back guarantee and a price at 50% of equivalent established platforms, it sounds to me like a good pricing tactic, if not strategy

If "QlikTech's central message of simpler analysis is compelling and clear" causes Gartner to "rate the company’s marketing as positive.", then that's good enough for me.

I could do worse than read a dozen Gartner reports to learn how the Real World views products and services, and what essential points make businesses feel good about purchasing from me, or, if you prefer, me making a sale to them.

When Things Get Me Down

... and they do, I trot off to Alan Taylor's Big Picture from the Boston Globe.

Image #9

Stunning factoids.

If you really believe that you don't have time to click on the link above, then read these words:-

Messier 104 (M104), the Sombrero galaxy. has a brilliant white, bulbous core encircled by the thick dust lanes comprising the spiral structure of the galaxy.
As seen from Earth, the galaxy is tilted nearly edge-on. We view it from just six degrees north of its equatorial plane.
At a relatively bright magnitude of +8, M104 is just beyond the limit of naked-eye visibility and is easily seen through small telescopes.
The Sombrero lies at the southern edge of the rich Virgo cluster of galaxies and is one of the most massive objects in that group, equivalent to 800 billion suns.
The galaxy is 50,000 light-years across and is located 28 million light-years from Earth.
X-ray emission suggests that there is material falling into the compact core, where a 1-billion-solar-mass black hole resides.
In the 19th century, some astronomers speculated that M104 was simply an edge-on disk of luminous gas surrounding a young star, which is prototypical of the genesis of our solar system. But in 1912, astronomer V. M. Slipher discovered that the hat-like object appeared to be rushing away from us at 700 miles per second. This enormous velocity offered some of the earliest clues that the Sombrero was really another galaxy, and that the universe was expanding in all directions.

Coping With the Needy

If you are with me you'll know that each morning I make contact with all the people whose Follow-up date is today or earlier, then I wade through contacts with the stalest last-modified day.

In other words, I deal with what I promised I'd do, then I make sure that I keep touching contacts ("in touch") without too much time elapsing; I want to stay in the front of their minds.

I keep track of how many follow-ups are scheduled at the start of each day, and how many remain at the end of the day to be carried forward to tomorrow.

Over the past three weeks I've seen follow-ups bloom from about 10 to 43 (this morning).

What is Going on?

I look closely and see that the bulk of the follow-ups arise from stale contacts in large corporate firms, members of the Deep Pocket Club, and I'm finding it difficult to reach them by phone, or have run out of things of benefit to them to spark a conversation.

So I Phoned Cheryl Scoffield

I had a goal in mind: I want to make a presentation to ten people in the boardroom of each of these 30+ large corporations. Once I've demonstrated my stuff for 20 minutes, the questions start to flow, and once that happens, they are hooked.

How to reach my goal of 30 presentations over the next two months?

I have the email addresses; the people know of me by name in most cases, by face in a few.

Cheryl's first idea: Write up a set of stories of what I've done for people and issue it as a newsletter with a call to action at the foot.

Out of all my (dozen?) stories, at least one will have to strike a chord, and then that contact will start to realize the advantage of having me in.

I chimed in at this point and realized that I can record a short video on each "story" showing my solution, store the video on my web site, and provide a link to a video for each story.

Why "Cheryl's First Idea"?

Because I'm going to call her back and ask for another idea.

And another ....