Achieve True Connection By Listening

If you are to make a list of the country’s most influential people, who would you include?  For sure, President Obama would make that list.  So would Warren Buffett and perhaps Steve Jobs.  You could argue that Sarah Palin to be on it depending on whether you’re a fan or not.  Now there’s one name that you may or may not have considered:  Oprah Winfrey.

Her success was hugely attributed to her ability to talk.  But Oprah did more of her share of listening.  The application of her ability to listen is obvious on her television show  She is constantly observing and listening to find issues to address on the air.  When she brings experts, celebrities, and authors on her show, she genuinely listens to what they have to say.  Oprah’s listening ability has rewarded her with incredible success and influence.

To improve your listening, consider the following:

1.  Schedule time with your network. Spend time listening to your followers, customers, competitors, and mentors.  Make sure that you give enough attention to all four groups on a regular basis.

2.  Meet people on their turf. Find common ground with people.  The next time you meet with a customer or an employee, ask at least three questions about him as a person.  It’s not all about business.  Seek a common ground to build your connection with him.

3.  Practice listening between the lines. Do you really pay close attention to people and what they have to say?  Do more than just grab onto facts.  Start listening not only for words, but also for feelings, meanings, and undercurrents.

A lot of voices are clamoring out there for your attention.  As you think about how to spend your listening time, keep in mind that you have two purposes for listening:  to connect with people and to learn.

“I remind myself every morning:  nothing I say this day will teach me anything.  So if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening.” – Larry King

5 Ways to Extinguish Fear

Even if you have a solid plan to get through the downturn, it’s easy to become overwhelmed or fearful of what may be around the corner.  Here are some action steps to help get your mind out of the recession rut:

1.  Change your point of view. For every negative statistic, there’s a more positive way to look at it.  For example, a 9.7% unemployment rate sounds scary; however, focus instead on the fact that 90.3% of Americans are working.  There are also lessons to be learned such as how to live on a budget and how to depend less on credit.

2. Be encouraged and stay motivated. Whenever I feel uninspired or discouraged, I read The Greatest Secret in the World by Og Mandino.  This book made me realize that my happiness and my success depend on no other than myself!  Go to your local library and check-out some self-help and history books about people who have achieved great things despite great challenges.

3.  Get moving. One of the best ways to fight stress is to exercise because it stimulates the release of endorphins, chemicals in the brain that relieve pain.

4.  Seek out support. It is harder to maintain a positive mood if everyone around you is complaining about how bad things are. Seek out optimistic people who leave you feeling hopeful about the future or those willing to overcome their situation rather than wallow in it.

5.  Just chill! Most people have become so accustomed to living lives of struggle and tension that it may feel abnormal to follow any other path.  Learning to calm down, loosen up, let go, and flow more gently through our lives is one of the surest paths to authentic success.

“The conditions of conquest are always easy.  We have but to toil awhile, endure awhile, believe always, and never turn back.” – Simms

What’s In A Personal Brand?

Flexible, dependable, creative, efficient, honest and optimistic define my personal brand.  To help me transition from being an employee to a business owner, I used a brand value proposition document, which I developed years ago to supplement my resume and tell employers why they should hire me.  The core values stay the same, while attributes change as you gain experience.  The key components of it are your positioning statement, what differentiates you from others; value drivers, things that support your positioning; proof points, accomplishments you have made that uphold your claims; and brand characters, your personal attributes.  With the document and a clearly defined brand, it was much easier for me to craft my elevator pitch, improved my confidence in terms of what I wanted, and for the most part it made me fearless in terms of  “I offer something of value and here’s why we should partner.”

Personal brand management includes your appearance, how your presence is perceived, your talents and skills and how they are communicated through relationships and your network.

The tips below will help you define and effectively communicate your personal brand.

What do you want to stand for? How do you want people to perceive, think, and feel about you in relation to others?  Create a list of why people should believe you can deliver on certain strengths.

Know and understand audience needs. Personal branding is also about the audience.  Understand the needs and meet them better than everyone else.  If you’re unclear about your client’s needs, ask, because their needs may have changed.

Be consistent. Watch how you react to adverse events.  Maintain a level head and a professional image.

Innovate.  Stand out from the pack by coming up with your ideas to drive growth in your or your client’s company and give yourself staying power.

“Your personal brand is a promise to your clients . . . a promise of quality, consistency, competency, and reliability.” – Jason Hartman

How to Lead for Exceptional Customer Service

Ever stop to really ponder about what business you’re in?  Ask around, and you’ll probably hear things like:  retail, food service, manufacturing, etc.  If those are the kind of answers you or your employees would give, then you’d be only half right!

One question for you:  If all your customers went away for good, would you still have a business?  Would your employees still have jobs?  Nope, of course not!  The more important half of what you and your employees do is CUSTOMER SERVICE.

Everyone in your organization needs to know excellent Customer Service, more importantly need to practice it.  And the leadership you provide plays a huge role in making that happen.

Here are some Customer Service Leadership tips:

Start with hiring the right people. Your selection process must be a part of your overall customer service strategy.  During interviews, probe the candidate’s passion for providing superior service.  Pose hypothetical situations and ask the candidate to describe how s/he would handle them.

State it in Job Descriptions. Make “Customer Service” a part of all job descriptions, no matter the level of function.  Make sure that that each employee understands how he or she directly or indirectly “touches” the customer.

Expect it and Inspect it. Clarify your expectations and communicate them to everyone.  Have follow-up meetings to make sure that they are clear on what is expected of them.  Include “customer service” feedback in all performance evaluations.

Make your Employees Customer Service Experts. Help your employees become experts on the products and services you offer.  Provide them with product manuals, sales tools, and appropriate training.  The more they know, the better their service will be.

Celebrate Successes. Recognize employees who provide exceptional customer services.  Share their stories internally and with your customers.

By applying these ideas and by focusing on the people who focus on the customers, you can help ensure that you don’t end up as one of the losers.  You owe it to your customers, you owe it to your organization and you owe it to yourself.

“Motivate them, train them, care about them, and make winners out of them . . . we know that if we treat our employees correctly, they’ll treat the customers right.  And if customers are treated right, they’ll come back.” – J. Marriott, Jr.

7 Rules to Create an Effective PR for Small Business

Effective public relations strategy is an excellent alternative to advertising, especially for small businesses with limited marketing budget.  It is a cost-effective way to gain exposure for your product or service, get more leads, generate more sales and build a great brand.

What makes PR so powerful? A product (or service) mentioned in the context of a news report or print feature story gives it a passive endorsement and third-party credibility advertising just can’t buy.

How can you make the PR process work for you? Here are a few rules you need to create an effective  PR plan to give your product competitive advantages in your market:

1. Identify your market. The more specific you can get about which group should use your product, the easier it will be to identify which media you need to work with.
2. Be clear about the benefits relevant to your market. Remember to sell your product or service to the media so your story will get published. Let them know the benefits and show them the numbers to prove that your product or service saves time and money–or makes money.
3. Position your product as unique. It’s important to be able to attest your product is x-times faster, better, cleaner or more cost-effective than your competitors’ product or industry standard. Such specific and proven advantages will provide the media concrete evidence to feature your product over anyone else’s.
4. Make use of testimonials. All other things equal, testimonials are one of the strongest ways to enhance the credibility of any promotional piece. This also holds true for your editorial piece as well.
5. Target the media used by your target market. Find out which media outlets your target market typically reads, views or listens to. Do an online search for free or inexpensive press release submission sites.  Research sources that outline available media according to locality and special interest groups.
6. Prepare your press release. If writing is not your forte, hire a PR writer or a seasoned virtual assistant to help you write the release.  Make sure the release has a great headline and it follows the AP style guides. Your first paragraph should be no more than 25 words and needs to both explain the headline and summarize the story. And remember to keep your editorial to one page or less.  If you are selling a product, attach a photograph.
7. Sell your release. Email or call the person named in the media guide. Give them the headline and the first paragraph. If you catch them on the phone, they’ll make a decision then and there whether they like it or not. A “yes” or “maybe” means “send me an email with more information.” Forward it immediately. Earn the right to follow up by asking if you can call back the next day or at some other specific time, depending on publication dates. Keep in contact, but don’t be pushy.  If the story is of value, it will sell itself.

While these steps don’t guarantee publication and broadcast, following these steps will give you a better chance of success.  These steps will enable you to start building good media relationships you’ll need for the future and also give your business a strong competitive advantage in the media market.

“If I was down to my last dollar, I’d spend it on public relations.” – Bill Gates

Authentic Networking

Whether you’re busy building your Dream Business, looking for a job or if you just want to meet new and interesting people, Authentic Networking skills are your key to success!  As many are reviewing their skill set, credentials, and pondering what the future holds for them, there’s one very important question that every professional and business owners needs to assess:  How strong is my network?

It’s great that you have a stack of business cards, but how well do those influential individuals even remember who you are, and more importantly, know how well you perform?

Because effective networking is based on mutually beneficial relationships, developing a solid base of contacts does take time.  But it is well worth the effort invested.  Experts provide several strategies on how you can build and maximize your best opportunity for finding work or customers:

Have a goal and be open

In today’s environment, you don’t want to close any doors on where you can meet influential professionals, but it’s wise to choose environments that work with your personality and style.  After-work mixers can put you in touch with a variety of people.  Having an idea of who you’d like to meet as well as background information on them and their business will help you focus as well as facilitate an introduction.  Speaking at conferences and becoming active in professional organizations will provide others with an opportunity to actually see and hear how you perform.  Those activities will engage others and draw professionals to you.

Have an elevator pitch

Make sure you can convey who you are and why you would be a good contact for someone else.  Remember, the first rule of networking is not what you can get, but what you can offer.  In discussing your background, people will want to know what you do and for whom you have done it.  Your presentation should also be concise, easy to understand, and not sound like a sales pitch.  People who come across as inauthentic have a style that says, “it’s all about me.”  Let your style send the signal that you have something of value to offer to others and that you are willing to help others.

Social networking and face-to-face networking must be treated the same way

Online efforts need to be a strategic as traditional networking.  The focus should never be on just accumulating names and “friends.”  Just like your face-to-face interactions, you want to develop quality relationships.  When using social networks, think of the 90-10 rule.  90% of what you share should be made up of personal insights and thoughts along with a heavy dose of helpful links, while 10% should be made up of messages that more directly benefit you.

Show you care; it’s not all about business

Talking about your interests outside of work can help ease the pressure of connecting with someone new.  It also shows that you are genuinely interested in making a connection with this person.  Volunteering, hosting an event, or serving on a committee are also ways to network without the stress of business.

Do not exclude anyone

We tend to take those closest to us for granted.  Reach out to family, friends, old classmates, and current and former work colleagues.  This is an easy network to fully cultivate, without the same pressures to develop new relationships.

Re-engage

Quickly reconnect with people after first meeting them.  You do not want to wait until you are in a stressful time to build your network.

As time progresses, maintain contact periodically – this could be every month by e-mail, quarterly, or once a year, depending on the strength of the connection.  You can send a newsletter to update your best contacts on what you’ve been working on and ask them the same.

Now go and network!

“Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family: Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.” ~ Jane Howard

Work Your Plan!

However you define success is up to you.  But one thing’s for sure: success just doesn’t happen overnight – you have to have a plan and then start working your plan in a consistent and disciplined manner.  If you’re in a bike, for example, you need to start pedaling to reach your destination.  You just don’t pedal once or twice,  you need to do it consistently or you’ll lose your balance and fall.

Once a reasonable plan is made, immediately implement it.  Acting quickly is an imperative for your business.  Don’t get me wrong, do think things through carefully.  But be careful to avoid excessive reasoning and  “paralysis analysis” that often hinders you to move forward.  Get things going fast, and then as you go along, make some “corrections and adjustments” if necessary.

None of us are particularly fond of rude surprises.   Not fun!  Don’t wait until the the estimated completion dates to see if you’ve reached your goals.  Schedule frequent progress checks, meet with people or teams involved to measure the task status and updates.  At those meetings, discuss the following:

• Is each goal still legitimate and achievable?
• Where are we in terms of reaching each goal?
• Have any situations or conditions changed since we originally set each goal?
• Do we need to make any changes to our goals, our action plans, or our performance levels?

The answers to these questions provide the acumen we need to steer us in taking our important mission to reality.

Now go start pedaling!

“Idleness is a constant sin, and labor is a duty.  Idleness is the devil’s home for temptation and for unprofitable distracting musings; while labor profiteth others and ourselves.” – Anne Baxter

Plan Your Work

Success is the result of clearly defined goals combined with well thought out plans to accomplish those goals.  People who are successful always have clear goals on which they stay focused.  Those who are unclear about where they are going experience failure, and this often results to a stopping point for them.

Plans provide us with the direction, focus, and organization we need to stay on task.  And since humans are not equipped with perfect memories, it’s always a good idea to make sure that they’re written action plans.

There are a few questions that may be helpful in developing our plans:

1.  What needs to be accomplished?

2.  Why is it important to get this done?

3.  When does it need to be accomplished?

4.  Where am I in relation to this task?

5.  Who will be involved in finishing this task?

6.  How will it be accomplished?

After answering these questions in detail, perform the last step by adding contingencies.  Do your best to anticipate the unexpected by asking possible “what if” questions.

Failure does not deter those who are committed to their own unique vision of success.  As the old saying tells us, “the world steps aside for those who know where they are going.”

Be an Effective Communicator

Okay, “communication” is a very broad topic – impossible to cover in depth in a few paragraphs. But there are several proven and practical strategies you can immediately apply to enhance your overall effectiveness:

Use Less Words

After writing a correspondence, presentation script, web copy, blog, etc, edit it with a goal of eliminating 20-30% of the words. It’s easy to find unnecessary words if you take time to really look.

Use Visuals

Be a creative communicator by using props, pictures, stories, etc. to convey your message.

Watch Your Language

Try to avoid acronyms, jargon, technical terms, ambiguous words (a little, a lot, very, really, etc.).  Don’t use words that the entire audience may not understand or often have different meanings to different people.

Avoid Rambling

Narrow your communications down to no more than three key points.  Most people have short attention spans.  Make sure you convey your message succinctly and clearly.

“How well we communicate is determined not by how well we say things, but how well we are understood.” – Andrew Grove