Archive for June, 2009

When you meet a new prospect or potential client at a networking event or other business affair do you remember to follow up? When was the last time you met a business colleague for coffee or lunch?

If you can’t remember the last time you did either then you need to start putting follow up activities on your to-do-list!  Busy professionals fail at this step consistently and regularly.  But if you are interested in growing your business you  need to ensure you do the following:

1.  After meeting a new contact send an email, card or letter telling them how much you enjoyed meeting them. Nothing helps to keep you in the front of someone’s mind than a personal note.

2.  Try to schedule lunch or coffee with a new business contact on a regular basis. This allows for you to get to know the other person more intimately and allows you the opportunity to share your knowledge and expertise.

3.  Remember to be of service to the people you  meet. If you meet people who can do business with one another extend the invitation to connect.  LinkedIn and Facebook are great tools to help you accomplish the introduction.

Remember,  consistent follow up and  you and your brand remain front of mind.

Are you afraid of Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook? Are you desperately trying to forget that these social media sites even exist?  Does the thought of having to use them send shivers up your spine?  Do you think that you’ll have to devote countless hours to “staying connected?”

Well I understand how you feel; I used to feel the same way.  But what I have come to realize is that social media is not as time consuming as you might think.  A few simple tips can help you manage all you social media tasks and bring you and your business a ton of recognition and new contacts.

Follow these tips to make it easier for YOU:

1.   Don’t put yourself on every possible social networking site.  It’s too much all at once.  Instead pick one or two to start with and build up from there. Master each site first before you add more.  Hopefully, you have set up a plan for your activities; now evaluate the ROI.  If you are not getting a big enough ROI reevaluate your activities.

2.  Use applications that streamline social media tasks. Use Google applications to help keep productivity high and applications like Tweet Deck to keep tweets organized and streamlined. Read blogs and websites in RSS Reader.  If you are not using RSS Reader reconsider using it; it will make reading feeds more manageable.

3.  Use effective time management strategies to keep it manageable. Set a consistent schedule for when you engage in social media activities.  Use a timer to keep you to the schedule you set for yourself and keep you on track.   And don’t live on your blog, email, facebook or twitter accounts!  Check in once or twice a day.

By following these three basic steps you can gain control and mastery over social media and formulate a strategy that will help give you the expsoure you are looking for.  When all else fails give over your social media tasks to a qualified Virtual Assistant or Social Media Expert. It may be well worth the time and investment so that you can focus on even more important aspects of growing your business.

Today I was updating my contacts on LinkedIn and was looking at some old invitations that had never been responded too.  I found one particular response funny.

Here is the scoop…I sent an invitation to a man who runs a networking organization.  At one point, I was a member of one of his local chapters.  I had met this individual on more than one occasion and was personally trained by him because I had been asked to be on the leadership team.   When he received my invitation he replied back that he didn’t know me and therefore we were not “linkedin” together.

Now I don’t know if that strikes you as funny as it does me, but I am going to share with you a couple of tips if you find your memory fading and someone invites you to connect on LinkedIn.

1. If someone invites you that you don’t know, don’t just blow them off.  Send them an email and politely ask them how you know each other. People understand that we are all bombarded on a regular basis with information and that occasionally we all need a gentle reminder.

2.  Once you get the reply, if your memory has been triggered and you indeed know the person, by all means send along a thank you and make the connection.

3.  If you don’t know the person but think you might want to be connected to them its really your call at this point.  You can choose to ignore the request to connect or better yet you can check to see if there are other people that you know in common. If you feel comfortable connecting, then do so and if not send a polite “not at this time message”.

4.  And for goodness sake if you run a networking organization and are into building up your connections, don’t just give a blanket “I don’t know you” as a reply.  It shows a complete lack networking skill!  Follow my tips  to show your savvy networking abilities.

Whatever you do, don’t look as foolish as this man did by not  investigating if there is a legitimate connection to be had.

When you go to a networking event who’s responsibility is it to help you network? Is it the event organizer?  You?  Or someone else?

When you attend an event, any event you must be willing to step out of your comfort zone and meet new people.  Often times I see women (and men too) who go to events and crowd together with people that they already know.  What’s the point of that??  The point in networking, or at least one of the points is to meet business people that you have never met before. So why hang out with people you already know?

Once you are there it is then your responsibility to mingle around and meet as many people as you can.   If the room is crowded or people are sitting at tables you can still get up and go to different locations,  introduce yourself and ask for people’s business cards.  But if you find a spot and sit in the same location all night long who’s fault is it if you don’t make the contacts you were hoping to make?

Move out of your comfort zone and start stepping it up a notch at your next networking event and see if you don’t get different results from your networking efforts.  Let me know how it works out!

Today’s business success strategy is about creating an action plan for success!

I am pretty sure that I have written about the need for a plan before, but if you can’t find it on my blog you can visit my web site at www.daretobephenomenal.com to sign up for my *FREE* report “The 3 Biggest Business Blunders Women Business Owners Make and How To Avoid Them”. In that report I go into detail about developing a strategy so that you are clear about where your focus is to move your business forward.

But for today I will give you a quick tip to help you with your overall plan.  Here it is….each day identify 3-5 priorities that you will work on first that move you towards reaching your weekly,  monthly or yearly goals.  By focusing your time, energy and talent on those priorities, you are ensuring constant, forward movement towards the goals you outlined for yourself AND you are not getting sidetracked with other projects or issues that come up.

By identifying the tasks necessary to continually move forward you create little wins each day that add up to big wins each week, month and year.  These wins are confidence boosters that help you see the phenomenal road of success that awaits you!

The other day I was on a coaching call with a client; I’ll call her Mary.  Mary was lamenting how she had so  many weaknesses that prevented her from being successful in reaching her goals.  This isn’t the first time that I have heard this from Mary.  She often focuses on her percieved negative qualities and it has become a real stumbling block for her.

Do you have any qualities that you perceive as negative?  I used to, heck in fact if you asked me to make a list of all the qualities that I have that some found annoying or just plain awful I bet I could fill a page.  But what I have learned is that the same qualities that I thought of as negative are really strengths in the right circumstances. For example say one of your perceived negative qualities is that you are a wimp.  When might being a wimp be a positive attribute?

I once read a story of a man who didn’t want to go drinking with his buddies because he was afraid to be in the car with someone who was drinking and driving.  He told his friends that he had a date…he was a wimp…he didn’t want to tell them he was scared to go.  That evening his friends got into an accident while driving drunk and one was killed.  Being a wimp saved his life.

When we seperate ourselves into “good” and “bad” we fail to recognize the importance that all parts of ourselves are necessary.  When we can accept all parts of ourselves we can stop hiding…we can be who we are.  It is in the acceptance of the “percieved bad” that we are transformed.

Today’s business success strategy is about listening to your clients?

When was the last time you listened to your customers?  How do you figure out what your clients want and need? Do you use survey tools or during conversation do you listen for what they articulate as their needs?

If you are in business you  need to be listening to your clients.  By listening to your clients it opens the door for you to develop programs, packages and services that they will want to buy.  What better way to increase your business than to give your clients what they want.

The company that succeeds in today’s economy is the one that has their ear to ground and is constantly innovating to meet the current market needs.

Tomorrow is the DARE To Be Phenomenal Women’s Only Networking Event.  Last week I posted that we were already at 100+ members with over 60 registered.  Well as of this writing we are at 119 members with over 75 women registered!

If you live in the Merrimack Valley area and are interested in networking with a group of extraordinary women dedicated to forging new relationships and taking their businesses to the next level; I highly recommend that you register and attend these meetings.  You will meet some of the most interesting and phenomenal women in the area and you are sure to have a great time and learn tips, tools and strategies to take your business to the next level.

For more information go to http://www.meetup.com/Dare-To-Be-Phenomenal-North-of-Boston-Chapter-Meetup/

See YOU tomorrow!

This weekend I went to a family wedding in Vermont.  My cousin Adam was getting married to his girlfriend Mia.  The wedding took place at the Grand Isle Lake House at Lake Champlain.  Boy oh boy was it absolutely stunning there.

All the usual family members where present; my aunts and uncles, cousins, their kids and their kids kids…all in all there where about 100 people at the event.

They managed to attend to every possible detail imaginable from ensuring all the kids in attendance where well taken care of by two fabulous nannies to plenty of food, drink (it was open bar all night!) to beautiful thank you packages for the out of towner’s!  It was a beautiful wedding and weekend.

I was reminded how important the connection to family is.  I don’t get to see my Vermont family as much as I would like too.  My elderly mother finds the drive tiring and she feels so stiff when she gets out of the car, so we don’t go as much as we would like too.  But I love to see them and this weekend reminded why.  They are wonderful people with big hearts, great senses of humor and generous;  I am blessed to call them family!

I think I have this quoted correctly, but whatever the right phraseology is, I think you get the point.

How is your marketing strategy working?  Are you getting the kind of ROI that you expect from your marketing efforts?  In this day and age you can not keep marketing your business like you did some 5 years ago.

How does one bust out of that old way of thinking?  By coming up with creative and innovative ways to market your business and stay ahead of your competition.  It requires you to be smarter than the guy next door, to stand out in the crowd and to listen to what your clients are telling you they want.  Do this and when the dust settles, and we know it will, you will be standing on top of the mountain with your competion at your feet.