Making Nice

Want to know what really works to influence people? Making nice. That’s it in a nutshell. Instead of meeting with your clients to do the talk and sell hustle, why not just take them out to breakfast or lunch — and leave the business presentation back at the office. Getting to know your prospective client, building trust and a friendly relationship is a smart way to do business.

I can hear you now — who has time for that these days? If you are going to be successful you must make the time to get to know your prospects and clients as friends and partners. Be like a farmer sowing seeds.

When you leave your breakfast or lunch meeting ask if you may contact your client in the future. If he or she agrees, great. Make that business meeting online, rather than face to face, and you’ll make up the time you ‘wasted’ by not talking business at breakfast!

Leverage Your Time With Online Meetings

Are you wasting your time? The first deadly sin of time management is procrastination, followed closely by delay. You know, all the creative little ways you find to put off meeting and talking with people who can and will buy your products or services.
By some measures fully one-half of working time, across the board, is wasted. Taken up by needless chatter, breaks and personal business that is interesting but not necessary and contributes not a penny to your bottom line.

We’ve talked about this before, but one of the best ways to cut out the heart of procrastination is with an ordered set of priorities. Determine your most important objectives everyday, make a list and stick to it. Review the list often during the day. And, most importantly, do it again tomorrow.

Another way to to squeeze more productivity out of your day is to make sure you have all the info you need when you’re selling either your product or yourself to a client. A stellar way to do this is to have a second meeting with your prospect — online — utilizing advanced real time technology. No more apologies to your client for not having the documents or background you need right at your fingertips. It’s all there on your office hard drive or network and with the press of a button it’s available to both you and your client. Or, with a quick cut and paste, your client sees only the information relevant to them. This kind of technology, my friends, separates the sheep from the goats among professionals.

Benefits of Meeting Online

Business entrepreneurship is risky

Everyday you’re playing the odds. You’re gambling that clients, willing to pay prices high enough to keep you in business, will be there. In turn, you will continue to offer products and services for those clients. Even better, you’ll innovate in order to make your products or services faster, better or cheaper than your competitors’.
Your clients are fickle. They are impatient, selfish, lazy, greedy and ambitious — just like you. They want comfort, security, fulfillment, leisure — you name it — immediately or sooner. Between 1900 and 2000, 70 plus percent of the biggest and most successful American companies were acquired, shuttered or out of money.
Your clients have choices. They can buy from you, buy from someone else or not buy anything at all. In order to become or remain successful you must not be afraid to try something new. Could that one new thing be offering your clients the benefits of meeting with you online rather than at their office or yours?

Add Some Show to your Tell

It’s Wednesday morning and you’re at it again. Calling prospects, following up
leads and doing the sales and marketing two-step.

This time, though, you are actually sensing interest from the person on the
other end of the line. They’re asking questions, probing deeper into your
offer. Great! You can’t wait to get to their office and show them your proposal
in person — but wait.

Why waste all that momentum? Instead, convert the ‘tell’ to a
‘show and tell’ by inviting your prospect to an immediate online
meeting where you can educate them visually, as well as vocally.

If you don’t know how to use online meeting software, not to worry. Simply
find yourself a 30-day free trial and get to work learning how to use it. Lots of
products promise to save you time and money, but, in my opinion, the online
meeting really delivers on that promise.

The Value of Extra Time

Let’s say, instead of driving across town to meet with clients
or colleagues, you could take the meeting, get through the agenda and accomplish
your tasks all from the comfort of your office.   All that and you have an extra 1
to 2 hours of time in your day.   We won’t even talk about the savings in
frustration or even aggravation from having to get in your car, negotiate
traffic, find a parking spot … you get my meaning.

What’s the value of that extra time?    It could be that you’d simply get more work done that day.  Maybe it would free up a spot to fit in that workout you’ve been meaning to do.   Or
perhaps allow you to knock off early and spend some time with the kids.

Using online meetings lets me do all that, all the time.   I can meet with my virtual
assistant, explain what I need her to do, show her the documents in question and
answer all her questions, in real time, without having to leave my office.   Did I
mention my VA is located about 10 hours’ drive from me?

Online meetings let me work closely with my assistant who lives in another part of the country.   Just another benefit of the technology!

Goal Achievement Cheat Sheet

You’ve probably heard about this before, but here’s a little reminder.

The following steps will spur you on to faster and more efficient goal

achievement.

1.  Be clear.  Determine specifically what you want.

2.  Reduce it to writing.  Include the details.

3. If you have a large goal, break it into manageable chunks.   Set a deadline.

4. List everything that comes to mind that you’ll have to do to achieve your goal.

5. Prioritize the list you made in number 4 above.  This is your plan of action.

6. Do something right away to take action the most important thing in your plan.   I can’t overstate the importance of this!

7.  Each day, do something that moves you toward the attainment of one or more of your important goals.Keep that ball  rolling.

Web Based Conferencing Saves the Day!

Last week I was talking with a colleague who used web based conferencing to stay in touch with out-of-state clients. She finds web based conferencing saves time and money by avoiding travel. She also finds it helps her stay in touch with clients better than just a phone call.

She told me a story of how web based conferencing saved the day, even with an in-state client who was only a few hours away by car. Seems after a long rainy spell the river that goes through her client’s city flooded the downtown area. My colleague literally could not get across the river to visit with her client. At stake was a high-dollar contract that had to be worked out right away.

Not to worry! My colleague used her web based conferencing subscription to work through the contract with her client in real time, just as though they were sitting together in a meeting room.

These days, web based conferencing can even be accomplished via your WIFI enabled iPhone or Blackberry. Fuze Meeting lets you host and attend web conferences, view multimedia content in real time, plus chat with co-workers and friends – all with enterprise-grade security — and the iPhone and Blackberry apps are free!

Host a Carbon Neutral Meeting

The next time you need to present your latest findings, update your across town clients or work on a document with your business partner, think carbon neutral meetings.

It’s easy to try. Just take advantage of the FREE TRIALS to hone your skills. It will cost you nothing out of pocket.

How many things can you say that about these days?

Tips For Effective Web Conferencing

Today I interviewed Susan Grey. Susan is a web conferencing pro, having held a web conference a week for the last 52 weeks! Following are her tips:

Conducting a web conference is not different than conducting a face-to-face meeting when it comes to presenting the material. The strategy of interaction will be different. The biggest difference is that you can’t see them in person sometimes. And, even if you can “see” them, it’s through a webcam, which is very different than being in the same room.

There are a couple of things that you will need to know in order to conduct a web conference. These are the vendor or host, content, features and cost. When looking at a vendor you need to make sure that you’re going with a vendor that is going to be in a position to grow with your business but that is not so far advanced that people without the newest technology won’t be able to get on.

You want to make certain that your web meeting is understandable to anyone that may be in your target group. For example, if you do a web meeting on the newest technological features of a network application you’re going to have clients with a different level of technology than if you are delivering a web meeting on a way to effectively cook a five-course meal and still maintain an off-the-cuff entertainment atmosphere. In one instance you are working with technical know-how folk who might have access to the newest in computers. In the other you are working with people who may be normal home users and is going to be working with older equipment.

Features like instant messaging or the ability to use a whiteboard also need to be considered. Considering if you want to incorporate these from your vendor or use separate services is something to look into when deciding the way to conduct your web conference.

The content is the most important aspect of your web conference. You need your content to be informative, to flow from topic to topic in a smooth and related way. The meeting should be designed for your target market and be done in a way that engages your audience. Web meetings are more interesting if they are interactive so you may want to include time for questions.

Vendors all have alternative ways of pricing and you should think about which option is going to give you the most features at the least cost. Typically, web conferences are far less expensive than face-to-face meetings.

So there you have it! Tips from an expert. Want to try your hand at holding a web conference? Try a free trial of GoToMeeting.

How Green Is Your Business?

Want to do your part to help the planet? Take your next meeting online.

By reducing your travel miles, you will greatly reduce your carbon footprint:

Consider that, on average:

• A full size car (18 – 29 mpg) emits 12,000 pounds of CO2 yearly.
• An SUV (10 – 18 mpg) emits 20,000 pounds of CO2 yearly.
• A roundtrip flight between NYC and LA emits 2,000 pounds of CO2.

Try a free trial of GoToMeeting. Do something good for Mother Earth!

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