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Excerpt from The Enthusiastic Networker

November 18th, 2011

I hope you saw my announcement on Wednesday that my new book, The Enthusiastic Networker, is available. Today I wanted to give you an excerpt so you’ve got a better idea of what the book is about. Enjoy!

Excerpt from Chapter 2 of The Enthusiastic Networker

Before we begin, we need a common language. What is networking? What is social media? What are the characteristics of a successful networker? And what about referrals?

There are a lot of misconceptions about face-to-face networking. Some think it is another word for soliciting sales. Some think it’s about collecting cards and contacts. Some think it’s only about finding new prospects and clients. Still others think the way I used to:, believing it’s something that only a certain economic class of people do or that it’s what happens on golf courses or at ritzy fundraising benefits.

Social media has almost as many misconceptions. For example:

* It’s only Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (maybe blogging).
* It’s a complete waste of time.
* Only 25-35 year olds do it.
* It’s so essential that it’s the only way to save a business.

Most of these misconceptions do have a certain amount of truth to them. Many people network exclusively among people of their class. Salespeople certainly network to find new prospects. Social media can indeed expand to fill all available time and space. Younger people are, in general, more comfortable with social media than Boomers. And to some extent, you do have to collect a certain number of contacts in your database to be effective.

But at its heart, networking is about building relationships. Hopefully, these relationships will last a lifetime. These relationships will nurture you no matter what you need, whether the need be clients, a new job, or the name of a great plumber.

What Is Networking?

Networking is about helping others. As Zig Ziglar said in Zig Ziglar’s Secrets of Closing the Sale, “You can have everything in life you want if you will just help other people get what they want.” I suspect that he meant that from a sales perspective, i.e., he’s talking about helping others get want they want by selling it to them. But the statement works just as well, if not better, when seen from a networking perspective.

Think about it. If you help someone to get new clients, doesn’t it make sense that he will help you get clients in return? Or if you help someone get a new job, one that is just perfect for her and her career goals, don’t you think she will be highly motivated to help you get what you want?

Of course. That’s what networking is really about. It’s connecting people who need to meet each other. Sometimes, you will be the connector. If you are good at it and do it well, sometimes you will be the connected.

It’s that anticipation of being the connected and the satisfaction of being the connector that develops and maintains the enthusiasm. There’s a real emotional charge about receiving a referral. Sometimes, there’s an even greater charge from giving a slam dunk referral. In either case, you want it again and again. Kind of like an addiction, but in a way that harms no one and helps everyone.

Networking is not about collecting the most contacts. I know someone who boasted that she had thousands of contacts in her Outlook database. She was connected to more than a thousand people on LinkedIn. She went to lots of networking events each month where she met new people and connected them with each other. Sounds like she must be a pretty good networker, right?

Unfortunately, she also constantly complained that she had no clients. How can that be? She knew a lot of people. She went to events and continued to meet new people. How could she not have clients? With so many contacts, she should have had many people clamoring to work with her.

The truth was that she was a contact collector. Yes, she met a lot of people, collected a lot of business cards, and had many LinkedIn connections. But she had a relationship with very few of them. It’s not enough just to know a lot of people. Truly beneficial contacts are people who like you, who trust you, and who know enough about you to give you referrals. And that was the piece she was lacking. The relationship.

Networking Fundamentals: Remember that networking is about building relationships. In life, it’s not the one who dies with the most contacts who wins. It’s the one who has the most people speaking, with love and respect, at his or her funeral.

What is Social Media?

When someone says “social media” a lot of people think Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, maybe MySpace or YouTube. But there’s a lot more to social media than these sites.

I define social media as “any way people meet each other, interact and build relationships online.”

Certainly the five sites above fit that definition. But social media is much broader than that.

Online forums or boards are social media. I hang out in the Wizards of the Coast D&D (Dungeons & Dragons) boards. I also often visit a forum for people who write Torchwood fan fiction (Torchwood is a dark spin-off from the British Dr. Who science fiction series). I mostly lurk on those boards, but if I wanted to, I could certainly build relationships there.

Listservs or email groups like Yahoo! Groups are another form of social media. I’m on the Kindlekorner Yahoo group. It’s been an invaluable source of information about self-publishing, as well as a great place to find free books. Again, I tend to lurk; I can only be active in so many social media channels. But I’ve spent enough time with that group to recognize many of the regulars. Some I like and respect. Some I don’t. Just like interactions in the face-to-face world, social networks bring you in contact with a diverse community. The trick is to sort out those you most want to build relationships with from those better left at arm’s length.

Don’t forget about LiveJournal. LJ combines blogging and social media, so that it’s more personal than, say, WordPress, which is a more traditional blog platform, as is Blogger. LiveJournal is mostly consumer-based, so you’ll find lots of special-interest communities as well as individuals. If you want to connect with a group of people focusing on, for example, dogs, LiveJournal can be more effective and focused than Facebook or Twitter.

My husband loves to play chess. Chess.com is the site he uses to find and play matches with people from around the world. There are lots of social media elements to the site, so even my husband (who insists he doesn’t do the “social media” thing) is active in social media. But don’t tell him, okay?

Given the multitude of options available, it is essential that you identify your purpose and have a reason and a strategy before diving into social media. If your target market is knitting fanatics, Twitter might not be the best place for you to spend your time. But a knitting group on Yahoo! Groups (I found 6515 when I did a search) might be perfect.

Just remember that social media encompasses so much more than Facebook and Twitter.

Liked that? There’s more in the book. Comment and let me know what you liked.

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Tags: Networking, writing
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The Enthusiastic Networker is Published!

November 16th, 2011

It’s been a long time coming, but it finally happened. My book, The Enthusiastic Networker is published and available for sale on Amazon.

When I say a long time, I mean it. Off and on, I’ve been working on this book for close to five years. It took that long for the book to find it’s voice and purpose.

What’s it about? If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ve got a pretty good idea. It’s about finding your own voice and presence in networking. It’s about the basic steps to getting started and staying motivated. I talk about using both face-to-face networking and social media together to make a total word-of-mouth marketing plan.

Newbies and pros can find something in this book, and the early feedback I’ve been getting supports that. Give it a try!

Publishing a book has been a goal of mine since I was a child. As I researched the industry, I’d decided to self-publish this one, but last year, a publisher found me on LinkedIn (who says social media doesn’t work). When a publisher says “tell me about your book project,” you don’t say no. And overall, I’ve been happy with the decision. Holding your own book in your hands is an experience that can’t be described.

But you know what’s odd? I’ve had the book for about three weeks now, and I’ve been selling copies at networking events. The book link finally went live on Amazon a few days ago, and seeing my name on Amazon was what finally made it real to me. What does that say about Amazon’s influence?

It’s been a long road, but I’m at the end of this one. My new journey of being a published author has begun. Help me out by buying a copy? If you’ve already bought a copy, thank you. Help me out by reviewing it on Amazon?

Tune in on Friday for an excerpt.

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Tags: Networking, writing
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Claim Your Place

November 14th, 2011

You’ve got a website, Twitter account and Facebook page. You’ve set up your LinkedIn profiles (both for yourself and your business), and you’ve created your Google+ profile and business profile.

You’ve even been an overachiever and created a YouTube channel, Flicker and Tumblr accounts.

Whew! That’s it, right?

Well, maybe not. If you are a business with an actual address, there are a few other things you’ll want to claim and monitor. I know, not what you wanted to hear, but if being a small business owner were easy, everyone would be doing it.

Don’t forget about Yelp, Google Places, Yahoo Local and perhaps Foursquare. These are other places customers can find you and talk about you. Some reviews will be good. Others maybe not so good, but you need to know about them.

Why do you care? Two reasons.

1. If you don’t claim it someone else, like your competition, might

Let’s take Yelp for an example. A Yelper can create a page for your business to review it. Also, Yelp spiders roam the web, looking for business listings and creating basic pages for them. Once a page is there, anyone can stop by and review you.

They can also stop by and “claim” the page. What does that mean? It means they have set up a user name and password to access and make changes to your business information. If that person is you, great. If not? Do I really need to spell it out for you?

If you claim your own page, no one else can claim it for you.

It works basically the same for Foursquare, Google Places and Yahoo! Local.

2. If you don’t know it exists, you don’t know what people are saying about you

If people are complimenting you, don’t you want to know about it? If they are saying you suck, you need to know that so you can fix the problem. But you have to go to where they are commenting, and the four places I’ve discussed in this post are the ones I suggest paying attention to. Yes, there are others, but until you have a large staff working for you, apply the 80/20 rule. Those four places, plus your social media channels, will hit 80% of the places people are reviewing you.

What if someone says something bad? Respond. Ask what happened. Offer to make it right. If someone on your staff received the bad review, discuss what happened. Maybe the reviewer is a jerk. Maybe your staff member was having an off day. But you, as a business owner, need to know about it so you can address any problems.

Respond publicly when you can. People notice and appreciate it. If you’ve made something right for a client, ask them to update their review. We understand that things can happen. We love it when we know mistakes will be fixed!

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Tags: communication, Relationship building, reputation, social media
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Working On the Go

November 9th, 2011

Are you a small business owner who moves around a lot? Do you travel between client sites or are frequent meetings in coffee shops part of your day?

If so, you need ways to be productive on the go, and the new trend toward tablets is supporting you. I’ve done several posts on using my Nook Color as a tablet and how it’s made me more productive, but there are several new low-cost tablets coming out before the end of the year, and all of them look like they’ll make you more productive.

I’m not going to get into a feature/benefit comparison, but the three I’m watching are:

The new Nook Tablet
The Kindle Fire
The Kobo Vox

All three are inexpensive and require no data contract. So once you’ve bought one, that’s it. There’s no need for a monthly data contract, which means you’ll need a WiFi hotspot or a portable WiFi device, but it hasn’t been a problem for me to rely on public WiFi.

What can you do with your new tablet?

You can use an app like Office Suite Pro to do your word processing and spreadsheets. I’ve been using it for several weeks now, and it’s the best tablet-based Office suite replacement I’ve found.

You can use Evernote for taking notes. I’ve been planning out a series of webinars in Evernote, and then at home, using my notes to create the Power Point presentation.

You can read books to keep up with new business ideas or to work on improving yourself.

Of course, you can keep up with social media, but I prefer my phone for that, so I can’t comment too much on tablet social media apps.

Does your business show off well in video? Tablets are a great way to show video. The screen size is large enough to view easily and small enough to be portable.

There are plenty of Calendar/To Do apps to keep you organized.

Gmail is fantastic on my tablet. In the evenings, I curl up on the couch to check my email instead of using my netbook. Obviously, WiFi is needed for this one.

The list goes on. I’ve been productive on the Metro, in coffee shops, on my couch, in my car (while parked, of course) and plenty of other places. There’s no excuse now to sit with nothing to do while you wait for someone to arrive for an appointment.

Anyone else want to share their tablet productivity tips?

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Tags: networking on the go, task management, time management
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Customer Service and Referral Follow Up

November 7th, 2011

Yeah, they are sort of related.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that follow up is one of the most important elements of a good networking strategy. Customer service is another piece of following up. I had a couple of good experiences recently, and I wanted to share them as illustrations.

1. Referral Follow Up

I recently had the make the phone call you never want to make. I had to call a friend to tell her the referral she’d made for me had gone south. The person she referred completely dropped the ball, and I hated to tell her, but she needed to know.

Her response to me? “I’ll get on it right away, call him and see what I can do.”

Awesome! It’s exactly the right way to handle it. She didn’t make excuses for him. She did ask me a few questions to make sure she understood the situation, and off she went. Now, we’ll see if her butt kicking has any effect.

2. Sales Follow Up

In another example, I was having trouble with logging in to my account for a particular service. Keep in mind that this is a network marketing type company, so my salesperson was just that, sales. He doesn’t know or get into the technical side. He wants me to order product so he gets his cut.

But he’s a good guy, and I thought maybe I was making a simple mistake, so I called him. He tried to troubleshoot. No good. Did he tell me to call customer service and see if they could help me? No, he went one better than that. He called customer service himself and set up a three-way call.

Awesome service! I felt special and cared for, and he learned valuable information in case another client calls with the same problem.

That’s how it’s done, folks.

When you pass a referral, do your best to make sure it all works out. You can’t make people do their jobs, but you can and should touch base with all parties to make sure everything went smoothly.

When you’ve sold a product, even if you’re not responsible for fulfillment, ordering and all that, it’s still good to maintain contact with the customer. Setting up a three-way call is an excellent way to ensure everything goes smoothly.

Anyone else have a good follow up story to share?

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Tags: communication, Follow up, Referrals
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Amazon Lending Library

November 4th, 2011

You may recall a few weeks back when I posted an article about how Amazon was, in my opinion, being reactive in the ebook space and not innovative. Well, some things have changed, and I wanted to update my comments.

Since that post, Amazon has come out with the Kindle Fire and several new Kindles, including a touch screen model. I had said Amazon needed to respond to the desire to have touch screens on e-readers, and I thought they needed a worthy competitor to the Nook Color.

Looks like they’ve done both, even though personally, there are some things about the Kindle Fire I’m not crazy about (like limited access to competitors’ ebook reader apps). Sure, it maintains their lock on content, but even the new Kobo Vox could load the Kindle app without rooting or otherwise messing with the operating system. At some point, you have to keep customers because they are loyal, not because you metaphorically locked them in jail.

But that’s a post for another day.

The new Kindles, however nice, are still reactive. They don’t push the limits too far. I closed my last post with requesting that Amazon answer a need no one else is answering, and they did that yesterday.

People have been asking for a “Netflix for e-books” for some time, and Amazon just released it yesterday. All Amazon Prime members have access to a limited selection of ebooks, for free, with no due dates.

No one’s really happy with it yet. The selection of books is tiny (about 5000), and you can only borrow one a month. Books by the big publishers still aren’t present, so you might not find that new best seller everyone’s talking about. In addition, it only works on Kindle devices, not apps, so I can’t take advantage of it. (But with the Fire so cheap, I might consider getting one in the future, even though it’s not the device I was hoping for.)

But think about it! Netflix had to build up their streaming content over time, and I’m sure Amazon will do the same. I believe in a couple of years, this will grow and be an excellent way to read ebooks. Publishers want to stop piracy. The music industry learned that the best way to stop piracy was to make content cheap and easy to buy.

Amazon has been trying to make that happen in the ebook space for some time. This is the next step in that process. Let’s see how it plays out, but I’m excited, even though I can’t take advantage of it right now.

Way to go, Amazon! You listened to your customers and are working to keep us happy.

Anyone else have an opinion about the new lending library?

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Tags: marketing, sales
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On Offering Advice

November 2nd, 2011

I was at a large trade show recently, where I was selling copies of my networking book. (Yes, I do have a book published. Why haven’t you heard all about it before now? Because it’s not yet available to purchase online. Soon my publisher will get it live, and I’ll post relevant links here. Until then, email me for information on how to get a copy.)

Ahem. Anyway.

Lots of people were offering me well-intentioned advice on what I needed to do to sell my book. Some of it was good. Some not so good. But almost all of it was offered in a tone that implied that I didn’t know what I was doing.

Yes, I am new to published authorship, but I’ve also done a lot of research and planning to lead up to this. I’m sure no one intended to make me feel like an idiot, but a couple did come across that way. (If you’re reading this blog and were at the event, I doubt I’m speaking about you.)

Of course, I was polite to everyone, but it made me think about advice and how we often offer it.

The last time you offered advice, did you inquire first if the advice was welcomed? Did you approach it like, “Have you thought about this?” or did you just come out and say, “You need to do this.”

Advice can be great. It’s also often worth exactly what we paid for it (usually nothing). If you’ve made some mistakes or been in a similar situation before, yes, you may have something to offer. But remember to assume the person you’re advising has already thought things through. Ask some questions before blurting out your advice. Maybe learn what someone’s plan is, then offer improvements to the plan.

After an entire day full of “You need to do this!” I’m giving some real thought to being more aware of what advice I offer and how I offer it. I really don’t want other people to walk away feeling, “Juli thinks I’m an idiot.”

How about you? How do you like to offer advice? How do you like to receive it?

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Tags: communication
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Managing Email-Keeping It Under Control

October 21st, 2011

In my last post, I talked about how to get your email Inbox to 0, which is the first step in taking control of your email. Hopefully you’ve followed my advice (or made a good stab at it), and now you’re ready to move on to keeping it that way.

But first, let me ask. How did you feel when you got your Inbox down to 0 emails? Good? Anxious? Invigorated? I hope your reaction was positive, because if you liked it, you’re more likely to keep it that way. I like looking at an empty Inbox. It makes me feel like I’m on top of things.

So how do you keep it that way? Well, first understand that it’s an ongoing process. Often, you’ll clear your Inbox and a few seconds later, a new email pops in. That’s okay. It’s much easier to deal with them as they come in than letting them pile up.

Before you can truly master your email, you need all your messages in one place. If you use a program like Outlook, make sure it’s gathering up all your accounts. If you’re like me and despise Outlook, you can use Gmail, which can be set to import all your email accounts. Having them all in one place is a huge time saver, especially if you have many webmail accounts, like I do.

Once you’ve got them all in one place, use a similar strategy to what you used to get it to 0 in the first place. When you open your Inbox, categorize your emails as follows.

Take action on quick emails right away

If an email will take 5 minutes or less to handle, answer it and either delete or file. Don’t let it sit there.

Create To-Do items for emails that will take longer

Unless you have time to deal with the more time-consuming messages right now, make a note and file the email in your Action folder. This way you won’t worry about forgetting about it. Once it’s on your To-Do list and out of your Inbox, it stops weighing you down.

Obviously, you’ll have to take action on it, and the other items on your To-Do list, but that’s true whether you’re handling email well or not. If your To-Do list is out of control, read David Allen’s excellent Getting Things Done. You’ll notice that I’ve adapted his email system for these posts.

Delete the rest. Or even better, filter them

Filters are my friend. When an email comes in that is junk, I don’t just delete it. I set a filter to automatically route the email to my Deleted Items folder. I get up to 50 emails a day that I never see (I just checked and did a quick count.) That saves me so much time. Sure, it takes me a moment to set the filter the first time, but then all emails from that sender are automatically deleted.

I prefer this to unsubscribing. For example, I’m on several Daily Deal lists. Right now, I’m cutting back on eating out, so I don’t want to be tempted. When my weight is back where I want it, I might be interested again, so I can just remove the filter and go back to seeing tempting cupcakes in my Inbox.

Filtering keeps the amount of junk way down, which allows you to focus on what needs your attention.

I generally delete and filter first when I open my Inbox. Let’s say I have 20 emails. After deleting and filtering, I’m probably down to 6 or 7 that need action. Most of those are quick “Sure, that’s fine” emails, leaving me with only one or two that need more time.

Setting aside two or three blocks of time each day allows me to keep on top of it and routinely get my Inbox down to 0 (which is where it is at the time of this writing).

Sound good? Go ahead and try it for yourself!

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Tags: task management, time management
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Managing Email-Getting Your Inbox to Zero

October 19th, 2011

Do you hate to open your email in the morning? Do you cringe at the thought of how many messages (both read and unread) are there? Would you rather get a root canal than answer one more email?

If you answered “Yes” to any of those, you aren’t alone. But it’s possible to be a good business person and not hate your email.

As I am writing this, my Inbox count is 0, and it’s the middle of the afternoon. I don’t hate my email. I’ve learned to make it work for me, and you can too.

The problem is that lots of people use email as a “reminder” tool. The theory is that if it’s in your Inbox, you’ll be reminded to take action. But that system breaks down as soon as you have more than 10-20 email “reminders” sitting there. We just can’t keep track of that much information, so we ignore most of it. I’m speaking from experience here. I used to do the same thing.

So what can you do?

First, get your Inbox down to 0 as soon as possible. Once you’ve got it down to 0 messages, you can start managing it.

“But, Juli!” you say. “I’ve got over 1000 message there. How do I get it down to 0?”

One message at a time. It might take you a few days (or a few weeks), but you can pare it back. Make a goal each day to have fewer emails at the end of the day than you did at the start, and you’ll get there.

Start with the junk

The odds are that most of the emails in your Inbox are junk. Delete them. Be ruthless. Email newsletters. Offers for the latest cool tech toy. Blog posts someone else thought you might enjoy. Everything like that. Delete them, right now.

If you absolutely think a message might be useful later, okay. File it. But get it out of your Inbox now.

The Old Stuff

If you have a lot of emails cluttering your Inbox, odds are most of them are ancient. Or at least old. Decide on a reasonable cut-off date and get rid of them.

“But, Juli! What if there’s a critical client communication in there?”

So what if there is? You haven’t acted on it before now. Odds are it’s too late anyway. Get rid of it!

Everything Else

Now you should have a reasonable number of messages to take action on. Go through them one by one. If answering it will take less than 5 minutes, do it now. If it will take longer than 5 minutes, add it to your To-Do list and file the message. I suggest having an “Action” folder for those messages. I create the To-Do and then keep the email in my Action folder for reference when I’m ready to, well, take action on it.

If you don’t need to take action on an email, either file it or delete it.

This may be a painful process. You’ll find stuff you’ve forgotten to do. You’ll find messages from friends and family members you wish you’d responded to, but trust me, it’s better to do this and get rid of the weight of all those messages. You’ll be more productive in the future.

What do you do once you get your Inbox to 0 for the first time? Tune in Friday where I give you some suggestions to stay at or near 0 forever!

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Tags: task management, time management
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