Festive Parties: Ideal Opportunities to Network!

Festive Season Parties: Ideal Opportunities to Network?
Seven Ways to Work That Room!

1. Arrive in good time. Slipping in just as the party is beginning is bad manners and gives other guests the wrong impression of you right from the offset. Most of all it also adds to your stress and anxiety (and you want to minimise that, right?). Plan to arrive 15 to 20 minutes earlier. This will give you time to catch your breath and gather your thoughts. You may even have a better opportunity of meeting the host and breaking the ice with them. Don’t be scared to tell them that you are keen to meet many others. You’ll be surprised at how relaxed you feel after telling someone that!
2. Be prepared for small talk. Have some interesting topics to talk about and share. If you regularly read the newspapers and other relevant industry journals you will keep in tune with current or local interest affairs and give you something interesting to contribute to the conversation.
3. Develop your “Verbal Signature™”. When somebody asks “So, what do you do?” this isn’t where you bore them to death with the entire contents of your C.V. Rather it is a brief synopsis or sound-bite of the kind of work you do and who you do it with. A good verbal signature will pique interest and move others to ask you for more information. (Why not download the free 20 minute audio training programme – and workbook – on developing your verbal signature. It’s available to all subscribers of The Marketing Edge!)
4. Share the attention. As much as you like talking about you and what you do, you will be far more effective if you take turns both talking and listening. Allow others to tell you about themselves and what they do. Ask open questions and actively listen. It also gives you the opportunity to clarify whether this is someone with whom you want to explore business opportunities further.
5. Move around and meet people. Your main purpose should be to meet and interact with lots of new people. If you arrive with a colleague don’t hide in their shadow. If they are talking with people you aren’t familiar with, get introduced, otherwise move around the room and talk to others. Likewise don’t get stuck for the entire event talking with the same person. Tactfully mention that you would like to continue circulating and meeting people. You could even ask them to join you as you circulate. If they present an opportunity that you would like to explore further, set up an appointment immediately and then move on.
6. Follow up. This is the number one area where so many folks fail – they just don’t have an efficient follow-up system in place. It only takes a moment to make a call or send an email to say how much you enjoyed meeting. If you promised to call, then call. Not within a month. Not within a week. Do it the next day. If you made any promises then for goodness sake make good on them.
7. Build bridges, don’t burn them. Perhaps you spoke to a number of people with whom you don’t see an immediate business benefit. The event was still fun wasn’t it? Nurture those new contact and build a relationship (that is the greatest point of networking, isn’t it?). Keep in touch. Down the line you may have just the product or service they need. Or you land up needing them. They may even refer you to others in their wider network that are looking for exactly what you offer.

These tips are an edited extract from my e-book ‘Knock Their Socks Off Networking’ available to purchase in my online store.

©Vanessa Deakin and Zee2A Limited 2008. Would you like to reprint this article? You may do so as long as you include the copyright notice and the following paragraph: Vanessa Deakin works with Professional Service Executives frustrated and disappointed with their current growth rates, marketing efforts, and business profitability. Through one-on-one and group mentoring programmes she helps them to skyrocket their results and break their own best records. To learn more, sign up for her e-zine, or make an enquiry please visit our website at www.zee2a.com.

Can You Sleep Through a Storm?

The feature article in this week’s Marketing Edge takes a look at the impending ‘storm’ of a recession, and uncovers two essential activities that will affect how your business weathers the storm.  If you want to ensure that your business remains intact whatever economic conditions give rise to, then be sure not to miss this week’s issue!

 

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Top Tips For Making An Impression

… Well at least in the Gospel According To Jonathan Schneider!

I got a phenomenal response to my previous post: The No-No’s Of Networking, LinkedIn users were particularly forthcoming in their responses, as were those on the Ecademy forum, and readers of The Marketing Edge e-zine.

Jonathan’s reply though, was the one that literally had us rolling around on the office floor in hysterics. We hope you enjoy his top tips as much as we did.  Oh and please do feel free to contribute your own – we’d love to hear from you too!!

What Are the “NO-NO’s” of Networking?

In your opinion: what really rubs you up the wrong way when networking?

Perhaps you have comitted the ‘unforgiveable s i n/s’ yourself and learned your lesson; OR you have been on the receiving end of someone else’s unacceptable or inappropriate actions / activity / behaviour.

It could relate to online or in-person networking.
It could be at or during an event
It could be what happens (or doesn’t happen) afterwards.

I’m looking forward to your comments!

I asked the same question on LinkedIn. Here are excerpts of some of the replies so far:

The ONE Thing Your Professional Services Business MUST Have!

Here’s a challenge: Do you know the ONE thing that separates the successful (including the obscenely successful, like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates) from the also-rans? Think you do? Perhaps then you also know that this same ONE thing makes more of a difference than pretty much anything else to ensure that your small business will one day become a big business, rather than a failure statistic? Anyone can do it, and it doesn’t require special skills, proprietary tools or expensive resources.

Shall I put you out of your misery? The ONE thing you MUST do for your business is to set clear, specific, time-linked goals.

What? That’s it? Boy, what a build-up for so little … but before you drop this article in disgust and go on to something else, answer me this: What are your revenue goals for the next three months? How many new clients are you planning to close between now and then? What’s the planned average revenue per client you close? Can you also answer those three questions for the remainder of the calendar year? If not, why can’t you answer those questions?

Most people who can’t answer those questions tell me that plans are irrelevant; it’s results that matter. What’s the point (they ask) of plucking numbers out of the air that may or may not match reality? Why not follow the Nike approach and ‘Just Do It’? After all, plans and goals don’t put money in the bank. And of course they are right; in the same way that drawing up plans for a new house doesn’t put a roof over your head – or does it? Do you know anyone who successfully owner-built a new residence WITHOUT first drawing plans? Neither do I, and that’s exactly my point.

Let’s take a few minutes to understand the value of focused business goals to you; and while we’re about it we’ll highlight the three steps to successful goal-setting:

The Journey versus The Destination

Shall we begin by visualising ourselves driving in a car? I usually frame this visualisation within the context of the M3 Motorway in Hampshire, heading for Southampton. (If you unfamiliar with that route you may want to Google it.) The key question is this: Is that a GOOD or a BAD thing?

No idea, right?

We couldn’t answer that question without at least some context, so let’s add a little to our visualisation. Let’s say that we are trying to get to Heathrow airport. (For those unfamiliar with the area, Heathrow airport would be behind us, and getting smaller in the rearview mirror). Now: Is that a GOOD or a BAD thing?

Isn’t it amazing how a simple thing like knowing where we want to go can make such a difference? Goals do that for your business – they give context to your analysis of progress and strategy. They allow you to decide whether to keep doing something or to stop and do something else, because they allow you to understand whether your efforts are moving you closer to where you want to be, or taking you further away.

There or Thereabouts

Let’s just take a moment to delve a little deeper into your destination as context. If you were heading for the airport, would it be enough to know which county it was in? Of course not! In fact, even having the main airport entry road as a destination wouldn’t be good enough – you would also have to know which terminal you were flying from, and where the rental car drop-off point was.

Likewise, it’s not enough for your business to have the goal of ‘being successful’. What does that mean? Take the time to define success. Remember too, that even if you didn’t set up your business to get rich you need financial goals. After all, money is the only means we have of keeping score!

The Tyranny of Time

Of course there are further aspects of context that enhance our visualisation. So, let’s imagine that we have turned the car around and are now heading towards the airport. The clock on the dashboard reads 14:12.

You’re ahead of me by now: You want to know what time the aircraft is leaving before you can tell me whether we’re on time, right? See how powerful that could be for your business? Not just WHAT you want to achieve, but WHEN you expect to be achieving it. So if what you are doing isn’t producing results fast enough, you can start trying something else, because you know where your business should be at a certain point in time. Since you are the driver, you are the only person who can make those changes – and you need the context within which to do it.

Don’t fall into the trap of setting your timelines too far ahead. (Many folk I speak to can tell me what their five-year revenue goal is, but not their current-year goal.) Within the context of our visualisation, what good would it do to know that we have to get to Heathrow in two weeks time? There would be no urgency, no immediate need to consider progress and direction – nothing to help us enhance performance. In short, an opportunity wasted. You – and your business – deserve better than that!

In summary, the ONE thing your business cannot do without if it is to succeed is goals. Those goals need to be clear, detailed and timely. If your business doesn’t have that, don’t delay! You could be on the road to Southampton at this very moment!

Having goals is not the end of the story, as many learn to their cost. The single biggest excuse I hear for not having goals is: ‘I set goals in the past and didn’t achieve them, so what’s the use?’ It’s not too dramatic to say that such people are emotionally scarred by their past inability to achieve their goals – but should they be blaming the goals? Does the problem lie elsewhere? We will explore this further next month.

Are you a Professional Services Executive yearning to grow your business profitably without sacrificing your quality of life? Are your goals becoming clearer but the strategies to achieve them still eluding you? Zee2A can help! Find out more about our Marketing Edge Mentoring Programme here.

©David Deakin and Zee2A Limited

Would you like to reprint this article? You may do so as long as you include the copyright notice and the following paragraph:  David Deakin, CEO of Zee2A, is a marketing guru who works with Professional services Executives yearning to take their business to the next level of profitability and success.  Through one-on-one and group mentoring programmes he helps them to create sustainable marketing strategies that attract more clients at profitable rates. To learn more, sign up for his e-zine, or make an enquiry please visit http://www.zee2a.com

Resolving The Dilemma of Ethical Marketing

Many service professionals will tell you that the words ‘ethical’ and ‘marketing’ don’t belong in the same sentence. While you’d be opening another can of worms by asking for a precise definition of ‘ethics’, let’s just say for the moment that often marketing leaves us feeling a little dirty, or sleazy if you prefer. One marketing guru summed it up by saying that marketing and sales are the world’s second-oldest profession – and often are indistinguishable from the first! Is that how you feel? If so, you have a problem (and you didn’t need me to tell you that!) That’s because without marketing you’re on the fast-track to retiring from a dull middle-management job at a faceless, heartless corporation. Not much in the way of choice, I hear you say!

Well, perhaps there is a third way. Let me say that a little more positively: I KNOW there is a way to be as successful as you choose to be at marketing without feeling like you need a hot shower and a scrub. Let’s take a few moments to explore the marketing dilemma and see if we can unravel it.

First, let’s acknowledge that not all of us would do anything for a quick buck. Most of us (certainly the professionals I work with) went into professional services because we really believed that we could do things better if we weren’t hamstrung by corporate red-tape, and that by doing things better we could better serve the customers whose dollar we were on. Has that changed? Not for me – and I doubt it has for you either. So at its heart our business exists because we believe it helps those we do business with as much as – if not more so than – it does ourselves. Many professionals remember this simple fact by carrying a Vision or Mission Statement which says so. (Without intending to get off track, I cannot recommend highly enough that you regularly reconnect with the reasons you went into business in the first place. Our Marketing Mindset process helps our clients to do just that.)

Second, let’s agree that sometimes we really need to close a deal in order to survive. We’ve all had months when the taxman was calling, the bank manager was refusing to extend the overdraft and the kids were expecting to be equipped for university like Shackleton was for the Antarctic! Some of us have had more of those months than we care to remember! At times like that it doesn’t help to hear some smart aleck say that if you really need the money, you shouldn’t do the deal. They may be right – and if so we’ll have our nose rubbed in it later when we’re trying to untangle from a customer whose expectations were way too high but whose commitment was close to non-existent. But in the heat of the moment it’s human nature to do what we have to do in order to survive, so we do and say whatever it takes to get the signature on the proposal.

Clearly then, there are times when our commitment to a customer doesn’t closely mirror our overall vision for our business. And if we have too many of those, we start to question our vocation. You may not realise this, but you should: Getting to feeling like that is a GOOD THING! It means that your profession still means something to you; that you still want to be better. You want to be better for your own sake, and you want to be better for your customers’ sake. If you ever lose that desire, you’re in deep trouble and I’m not sure who can help you!

However, that scenario should not be the norm for service professionals. All too often, though, it is. Why? Because we neglect the necessary chore of regularly prospecting for customers until the urgency is great enough to force us out of our comfort-zone. Or, to put it another way, we don’t do any marketing until we’re having ‘one of those months’ – the type that make us unethical marketers! Are you sensing the pattern here?

Finally, then, lets discuss how to break the cycle that leads to ethical misdemeanours. It seems too obvious to say, but plainly it’s not: Do more marketing more regularly, and you won’t have many of ‘those months’. Of course it’s one thing to say it and quite another to do it. How do we market regularly? What does that involve? How do we get the most bang for the buck? We are busy people, so only the most effective marketing activities should be in our portfolio or else we’re wasting time and money, right?

Many years of testing and sifting have demonstrated to me that there is nothing that even comes close to Relationship Marketing in terms of effectiveness for service professionals. As I define it, Relationship Marketing is about building trust with and demonstrating credibility to prospective clients before initiating the crucial sales conversation – letting them get acclimitised to you and plying them with information about your services so that when you ask for their business they have little hesitation because they already know they’re going to get value-for-money. And for it to work successfully on a consistent basis, you have to have a game-plan for it.

Put in a nutshell then, a good Relationship Marketing game plan well-executed is the cure for the ethical marketing nightmare. So what are you waiting for? Make sure NOW that your marketing strategy is focused on building relationships – not just when you’re desperate for new business but every week and every month. Your conscience will thank you later!

©David Deakin and Zee2A Limited

Would you like to reprint this article? You may do so as long as you include the copyright notice and the following paragraph:  David Deakin, CEO of Zee2A, is a marketing guru who works with Professional services Executives yearning to take their business to the next level of profitability and success.  Through one-on-one and group mentoring programmes he helps them to create sustainable marketing strategies that attract more clients at profitable rates. To learn more, sign up for his e-zine, or make an enquiry please visit http://www.zee2a.com

 

How To Get Great Response To Your Marketing Efforts

The current election race in the USA has given rise to a lot of comparisons between the public-speaking styles of the various candidates in either party – not that deep analysis of potential presidential candidates is anything new! Perhaps one of the most powerful sound bites of any election race was a self-effacing comparison made by Adlai Stevenson between himself and John F Kennedy during the election campaign in 1960. Stevenson invoked the memories of two great orators of the Greek and Roman eras when he said: “When Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, ‘How well he spoke‘, but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, they said, ‘Let us march‘.”

Of course, JFK was an outstanding orator, but then so was Stevenson (by reputation, at least – I have never heard a recording of him). So what made the difference between the two in terms of their ability to inspire action? One commentator, in discussing Stevenson, put it this way: “His speeches were isolated works of art rather than stations on a line along which he wished to travel.” So, in my own words I’d say that when Stevenson spoke he enjoyed the moment, but when JFK spoke he never forgot that he was trying to get people to vote for him!

What on earth does all of this have to do with marketing? It’s quite simple really: We must never forget while marketing that we are trying to get people to do business with us! If we do, we might leave a room full of people thinking: ‘How well he spoke’ and then turning to other things. Has that ever happened to you? It certainly has to me! I’m going to take this opportunity to share a story with you that was related by a friend and colleague, and I choose his experience rather than my own for two reasons: Firstly, he is a consummate professional whom I would never have imagined capable of such a blunder (where my own are depressingly regular) and secondly, because the circumstances make it all the more painful and therefore memorable. So, to the story!

My colleague is a Life-Coach who specialises in working with actors and the like, and is good enough to have been invited to address a group of three hundred recent and past graduates at Giulliard (the premier school of acting in the world, in case you haven’t heard of it). By his own accounting, my colleague gave a ‘kick-ass’ presentation extolling the virtues of working with a coach and the resultant benefits for the career and life of the coachee. When he had finished, he wrapped up by saying something like: ‘There are a pile of my business cards on the table by the door. If you’re interested, take one and call me.’ Guess how many calls he got? Yup – zero ! Now I’ve seen this person speak – and he has a rare gift – so it wasn’t because he didn’t speak well. It was because for a crucial moment he lost sight of the fact that he was trying to get people to do business with him.

So what should he have done? What should you and I be doing each and every time we talk to a prospect, either one-on-one or as a group? Simply this: Take them by the hand and lead them to the next station on the line which leads to a sale.

Let’s illustrate: You’ve met a potential client at a networking event and in a few minutes of conversation you’ve determined that there is a potential fit for your services. You may try giving the prospect your card and suggesting they call you, but what is your likelihood of receiving that call? As an alternative, why not ask for their card and call them? That’s better because you’re in control of the next action, but there is still room for improvement.

Why not try this next time you’re in that situation? ‘Sally, I sense that there is some opportunity for synergy in what we’ve discussed, don’t you agree?’ If they do, then you say: ‘May I have your business card? I’m going to send you an article that I wrote on that very subject. It will be in your Inbox by midday tomorrow.’ You now have a clear path for this prospect to the next step in your marketing process. (You DO have a marketing process, Right?!)

Of course, if this is a prospect you’re already familiar with and who you believe already has a level of trust in your credibility, you may feel that sending an article is insufficient progress. So you could carry on with: ‘Do you have your diary handy? I’d like to buy you a coffee and explore this area of opportunity further. How does 10 o’clock Thursday work for you?’ Wow! An appointment for a sales call! That was too easy!

You may be saying: ‘I couldn’t do that! It would be an imposition!’ Would it really? Why do you think that prospect came to that event? Why did they share their situation with you and then give you their card, if it wasn’t because they were looking for help addressing their issue? Another colleague put it this way (he’s Australian and doesn’t mince words!): ‘Most people are walking around with their umbilical cord in their hand, looking for a place to plug it in.’ A graphic image – but ultimately an accurate one. So you would be doing both yourself and your prospect a disservice if you didn’t make sure they got plugged-in to your value-adding services as soon as possible!

But it won’t happen unless you take them by the hand and say: ‘Let us march!‘

Are you a Professional Services Executive yearning to grow your business without sacrificing your quality of life, but not sure how to take the next step? You may be ready for The Marketing Edge programme. Contact us now at info@zee2a.com to discuss how the programme can help you to fill up your fee-book with profitable clients.

©David Deakin and Zee2A Limited

Would you like to reprint this article? You may do so as long as you include the copyright notice and the following paragraph:  David Deakin, CEO of Zee2A, is a marketing guru who works with Professional services Executives yearning to take their business to the next level of profitability and success.  Through one-on-one and group mentoring programmes he helps them to create sustainable marketing strategies that attract more clients at profitable rates. To learn more, sign up for his e-zine, or make an enquiry please visit http://www.zee2a.com