Archive for the Communication Issues Category
Pound It Hard
Do you know what a builder would say if you asked, “How do you hammer in the nail?” If he didn’t laugh in your face he would tell you to swing the hammer on top of the nail until it goes in the wood. Simple and no need for a detailed tutorial.
Learning how to leverage social media’s ability to send traffic to your website is all about striking the nail so many times that you hit the mark more often than not. You know how social media works. Popular stuff gets reposted and the weak stuff is forgotten.
You have to be willing to be in everyone’s face for many years. Because if you aren’t annoying people just a little you aren’t doing it right.
Check out this awesome interview from Lewis Howes with Grant Cardone. Grant tells his secret to getting attention online.
- Seek attention
- Receive criticism
- Feel the hate
- It all builds into admiration
If you are not willing to put yourself out on a limb and say something different people aren’t going to care. People want fresh ideas that will help them in their business and life.
How can you put yourself out there so people take notice of your ideas?
Measure and Spread
I went to a new dentist yesterday because I didn’t like the old one. I picked the one my wife went to. Very smart of me. If it’s good enough for my wife it’s good enough for me.
The first person I met was the receptionist who said, “Oh, your Nikki’s husband. Cool. How are you today?” She smiled and made me feel welcome. This is what I expect when I go into a business that could potentially take thousands of dollars from me.
They ended up taking $820 because I had a cavity under a filling. They had to grind down the tooth and put a temporary acrylic crown until they have a porcelain one molded. I wasn’t upset by the price of my procedure. I felt relieved because I was being taking care of by the staff.
My money is going to the same place. Castle Dental in Austin is a chain. So the other Castle Dental I left to go to this one is still going to pay its employees, but the one that I like will have a lot more new and repeat business than my old one.
I’m not sure what Castle Dental does to train their employees, but they should take notice of the locations that they have and why they are growing vs why some are shrinking.
Simply measuring your success and implementing it within other parts of your business will make a huge difference.
Supercharge Your Business Relationships
Have you tried building better business relationships, but keep falling short?
The people in your life want to take your relationship with them to the next level. The only thing stopping them is you.
You have to give people a reason to want to help you.
The only way to do this is to offer what you can and make it an offer that magnifies your value. You have to think of ways to help other people reach past their goals.
The best thing you can do is offer people your help.
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How to Do Business with Different Personality Types
Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Lisa H. (aka RunningBear) of Getting to Zen
If you charge for your work, then you know the dilemma between charging hourly versus charging by the project. There are arguments for and against both. For example, if you charge by the project, you could end up doing a lot more work than the project is worth and if you charge by the hour, you many lose clients to the variability of the cost. Knowing the personality type of the persons you are working with can not only help you in deciding how to charge for your efforts but make your working relationships a whole lot smoother.
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Restoring Your Lost Powers of Concentration: An Elemental Approach
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Susan C, at S.D. Chambers’ SAGE Editing & Research Services. Learning how to focus your mind and energy is vital to accomplishing your marketing goals. This in-depth post will teach you how to develop a fun and grounding system to stay focused on your tasks.
Are you overwhelmed or under-enthused?
Did you know that Google returns almost 6 million hits if you type “mental focus” into the search engine? Why do we find it so difficult to stay focused on completing a project or long term goal these days?
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Effective Communication in the Land of Endless Emails
Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Kenneth McCall is director of IT for storage.com.
I love email. It gives me a running record of who said what when. I can write a very business-like email even late at night or early in the morning – look how late he’s working, impressive! I can give bad news gently without having to actually face the person. I get to use passive-aggressive smiley faces. Guess you’ll have that report for me tomorrow instead of today since it’s already 5:30? 
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A Letter that You Wish Your Boss Would Write
Editor’s note: This is a guest from Lisa H. (aka RunningBear) of Getting to Zen
What makes my boss so great is that he treats his employees like human beings and not like resources that are there just to help him achieve his goals. Although he is my manager, everything that I do for him feels collaborative (even my performance reviews).
As I was scouring the internet to increase my understanding of boss-employee relationships, I came across a hypothetical note a boss wrote to his employees. What I liked most about note was that it provided great insight on how to establish a good relationship with your boss from a boss’s perspective. I liked the idea so much that I decided to write one of my own.
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5 Ways to Stay Focused at Work
Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Ali Luke of Constructively Productive.
However much you love your job, there’ll be times when you’ve got tasks which you struggle to get on with. Maybe they’re boring, so it’s hard to stick with them. Maybe they’re hard – and you have to fight the urge to stop and do something easier.
And if you don’t especially like your job, you can still get a sense of satisfaction from spending a day working hard – instead of stopping every ten minutes to update Facebook. You might even find that applying a bit more focus makes your job more enjoyable.
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Superheroes In Your Back Pocket
Every career and business needs one thing…
A boatload of great people that you can rely on for anything. You can’t be a superwoman at selling, design, social media, writing copy, creating a website, making coffee, giving presentations, riding donkeys through the hills of Mexico (that was just there to make sure you were paying attention) and marketing your superpowers.
You can’t be good at everything.
You can build a network of people who help guide your career along. It’s all about relationships. You need people you can trust. If you don’t, you flop around gasping for stress relief.
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How to Stop Being Allergic to Marketing
You have to stop hating on marketing. It’s not going to make you throw up. Ok, it might if you keep doing the stuff you hate. That’s the key; you need to stop doing the marketing that doesn’t fit your superpowers.
You have amazing superpowers that people need, but they don’t know about you. This is crazy.
Maybe you should take my “marketing” placebo pill. We can rewire how you look at marketing in less than 10 minutes.
Wouldn’t that be cool?
Seriously it’s not pushing your crap on to people and hoping for the best. It’s about qualifying your right people and letting these people know how you can solve their pain.
I love when people solve my pain. I want to hear about people who can solve my pain. I pay people to solve my pain.
It’s this simple:
- Where are your favorite kind of people? (The kind of people that want to buy your products/services.)
- Go to them. (online and offline)
- Ask them what type of problems they have.
- If you can help them then tell them how you can help them.
- Let them ask how much you charge.
When you make your marketing system too hard it becomes painful. Marketing should be fun. Really. If you aren’t having fun connecting with new people then you aren’t doing it your right way. That’s important. Your right way.
It takes a little practice, but after trying a few techniques that you think you would like you’ll know what works and what doesn’t after 30 to 90 days.
Most of the people reading this don’t enjoy marketing because it pulls them away from work that they would prefer to do. You can’t sustain a business with this attitude. You have to keep the pipeline pushing in new people, so when people don’t need your product/service you have new people who do.
What type of marketing do you enjoy?
Do you try to do this marketing every single working day?