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Please Don’t Ask Before You Say Hello and Another 9 Don’ts

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Lead with Relationships

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Again this week, I got an email from someone who doesn’t know me, who wanted to engage my network in her cause. This post is about that one email exchange that exemplified too many don’ts in my inbox.

I’m a person, not a network. And my network is made up friends and colleagues I respect. I value them. I treasure them. I trust them. I know I can’t replace them. I don’t give, share, or sell their attention to people I don’t know. So please …

1. Don’t Ask for Things Before We Know Each Other

Any person who takes the shortest while to follow me online knows that I’m a giver and I love to support my friends. Any person who takes a second longer also knows that

I want a relationship not a one-link stand.

What that means is that I want to get to know you before I recommend you or share what you do with my friends.

2. Don’t Ask for My Network

I’m writing because I’ve identified you as someone who is part of a networking empire that is basically unstoppable, and a major online influencer when it comes to what people are thinking and feeling and doing.

Translation: I want to use your network because my own isn’t big enough to reach my goal.

In itself that’s not a bad strategy to ask a friend to reach out to her network. But the relationship — the friendship and the trust — needs to be there first. This someone saw me as a channel of distribution, not a person. She wasn’t really looking at aligning our goals.

3. Don’t Assume Your Mission Is My Mission

The next five paragraphs were about her, her mission, and why her mission is important to her. Aside from describing their philosophy and stating that I lived it, the mission itself wasn’t very clear. Neither was why I should invest in it.

4. Don’t Lie by Omission

I got curious to find out more about the cause or the product that this mission was all about. It’s a retail and lifestyle brand of apparel. Funny how that never got mentioned in the first or the emails that followed.

5. Don’t Act Like I Work for You

Why have I gotten in touch with you today? Because I believe you embody my mission and can help others do the same.

Tweet the following message ….
Post the following message on Facebook …
Share the following message with your readers …

Again, I might do plenty for a friend, but without that relationship, calling me to action so directly was telling me to open my network to someone I’ve never met.

6. Don’t Ask Me to Cross the FTC

Doesn’t telling me what to tweet or post break the FTC rules?

7. Don’t Offer Me Favors

My lack of response might have signaled that I was busy or that I had a lack of interest. But apparently it did not. Soon I got a follow up repeating a shorter version of the same message above the original.

Did you get it? Do you have any questions for me?
I’m working to develop a huge wave of enthusiasm … hope I can count on your support. And since I know favors go both ways, in return for your support I’d like to offer you a limited edition … t-shirt…
or maybe something else? Networking or entrepreneurial support?

8. Don’t Assume I Have Nothing Better to Do

Let’s talk, and find out more about how we can help each other. Please let me know your thoughts ASAP …

Your urgency isn’t my urgency. I have my own work.

9. Don’t Shout Louder After a “No, Thank You.”

I replied as graciously as I might. My exact reply was …

I got your message. You have a lovely message that you want to share. Your energy is admirable. I can see your passion for what you’re doing. I wish you the best of luck with it.

Unfortunately, my family, my clients, and current projects are all I can keep up with. It wouldn’t be fair to them to take on another project.

Thanks for asking,
Liz

I might have expected that would be the end, but it wasn’t.

The reply read:

Hi Liz,

I understand and thank you for your reply.

The real reason I’m connecting with you is because YOU (as an individual), appear to fit [our] profile and seem like someone who’d want to be a part of something great, in its infancy stages – by doing something little to help spread the word and enthusiasm.

Even if just via your personal Facebook account or something – is there any way you’d be willing to help me out?

There’s a free [deleted description] T-shirt in it if you are… :o)

Best to you with your business endeavors as well…

Two more emails followed in which I was commended for my “due diligence” in having checked out the emailer and set straight in that she had built her huge network from being positive and sincere with people who showed immediate enthusiasm for her cause.

I didn’t know that I had done that.

It was never mentioned that the “cause” was the philosophy behind a retail apparel brand.

These are only the don’ts from one email exchange with one person.

Do you have other don’ts that belong on this list?

Be Irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

These are only the don’ts from one email exchange with one person.

Do you have other don’ts that belong on this list?

Be Irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

The Polar Bears have had it…

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by Patty Azzarello

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Recently I was on the street in a downtown area, and I came across a group of young people with clipboards.

One of them engaged me to share the plight of the polar bears, and all the bad things that are happening to them because of global warming.

My policy on donating to charities is twofold:

1. I have a group of organizations that align closely with my values to which I donate the bulk of my charitable contributions, and

2.  If someone has a good pitch, I’ll usually give them something — 10 or 20 or 50 dollars, because I respect the work they are doing.

OK.  So I want to help the Polar Bears…

I didn’t need to hear a long story about the Polar Bears. I understood the issue. I cared.

This young woman was selling her heart out so I said, I’ll give you $50. 

She said, “I can’t take cash”, what you need to do is sign up here for an ongoing monthly contribution.  Your credit card will be billed each month for the amount you choose. (The lowest monthly contribution on the form was $20.)

I understand you can’t take cash, I said, but I am not going to sign up for a monthly donation.  Can’t you check off somewhere on your form that this donation is a 1-time payment?  NO.  And then she proceeded to tell me why I was wrong to ask.

How to prevent your customers from giving you money

So let me get this straight.  Here is a chance to get my name, my email, and my credit card information – and $50.  And the opportunity to remind me forever after about the polar bears, or other related causes, and ask me for additional contributions forever after.  And the answer is “NO, we can’t do that…”

So I started thinking about all the things businesses do to prevent their customers from giving them money.

The root of it is that buying is an emotional decision for any product or service.

In the mood…

I thought it was very well put by a shop owner I know in a town that is fairly wealthy, during the early days of the economic downturn. He was telling me, “It’s really hard.  Clearly, my customers have money, that’s not the issue.  The issue is that they are not in the mood to spend it right now”.

Think about that.  The opportunity of having a customer who is in the mood to buy.  Wouldn’t you want to do everything possible to tip them over the edge to buy from you, right now, while they are in the mood?

I was in the mood to help the polar bears.  I was turned away.

If you have a customer who is in the mood to give you money right now.  Take it!

More income-prevention techniques

Here are some additional things I have seen businesses do to “break the mood”, and fail to close the deal.

1. We don’t offer this as a product, only as a service.  Or, we don’t offer this as a service, only as a product.  Know how your customers want to buy what you offer, and offer it their way.  Yes, it’s harder for you, but that’s why you get the profits — from dealing with the hard parts and making it easy for the customers to get what they want.

2. No online purchase option. Or the order and payment process is so difficult or confusing that people have to call you anyway. (strike 1) Then staff the phone with incompetent, annoying people, (strike 2) who can’t help, or answer questions, let alone sell (strike 3).

3. We don’t’ take American Express. Get over it.  It’s a little more expensive to you as a merchant.  But people like using their Amex card, and often have business reasons to do so.  You are just demonstrating that you are not a real business.

4. This product isn’t available yet – That may be true, but sell something that IS available now, and include an upgrade to the thing they want later.

5. Continuing to sell after the person is ready to buy.  There’s almost nothing more annoying.  Once the customer wants to buy – STOP selling!!

Dear Charity Organizations,
In my humble opinion, you should give this army of enthusiastic young people (not to mention the polar bears) a chance. Let them close the deal on one-time contributions and get email addresses of actual donors that you can upsell later.  They are working their hearts out for you,  and you have tied their hands. 

I’ve since, been similarly approached in two more cities, and my one-time donation refused. 

PS. Because I wrote the blog post and used the polar bears for an example, I have made a donation to help the endangered polar bears.  But in general, by the time I get back to my computer and have the chance to go to your website, find the program I was interested in, to make a one-time donation, I am no longer in the mood.

Remember, Your product and your value proposition are only part of the reason people buy. If all of that is great, getting them to part with their money is still a personal, human, emotional action.

Whether you are selling shoes, subscriptions, or enterprise technology, make sure you don’t miss the mood.

By the way, I later realized that online their online donation process didn’t work! I was never charged. I went through their whole payment process, but they again failed to take my money.

—–
Patty Azzarello is an executive, author, speaker and CEO-advisor. She works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. Patty has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at Patty Azzarello’s Business Leadership Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello. Also, check out her new book Rise…

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The Book List: #SOCIAL MEDIA PRtweet & The Seed

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The Book List: a weekly series by Teresa Morrow

I’m Teresa Morrow, aka The Author’s Cheerleader and I work with authors & writers to help them with their online book promotion and marketing. As part of my job I read a lot of books (I love to read anyway!). The books in The Book List series will cover a range of topics such as social media, product development, marketing, blogging, business, organization, career building, finance, networking, writing, self development, and inspiration.

‘#SOCIAL MEDIA PRtweet’ by Janet Fouts

In #SOCIAL MEDIA PR tweet Janet Fouts shows you how. Social media, as she explains lucidly, is not about one-way broadcasting but about two-way communication. Sure, your company’s PR messaging needs to go out but after that you also need to engage your audience, assimilate feedback and close the loop. In other words, social media is all about dialog.

Public relations is a changing field and it can be a challenge to manage and control corporate messaging
in these times of lightning fast responses and broad data dissemination. Bottom line? You can’t control social media, so you’d best learn to understand how to work with it instead of against it. The tips in this book will get you on the road to understanding the potential of this medium. The fact that these are delivered in 140 characters or less demonstrates the value you can deliver in small packages.

Here are a few tweets from the #SOCIAL MEDIA PRtweet I enjoyed:
#10 Social media is turning PR professionals into content publishers.

#24 Post relevant and useful content on a forum with a high Google page rank and it will raise the ranking of
your website too.

#40 Every day find ten people already in your network and support them in some way. Share their blog post, or their new product or service.

#47 Creating a blog can open a lot of doors and help establish you as an industry expert, serve as a
platform to engage consumers on a deeper level, and be a safe place to introduce a new product.

#76 Be generous. Quote others and link to their content as a benefit to your followers without apparent
benefit to yourself.

About the Book*:
PR has always been demanding. With expectations of lightning-fast responses, today’s consumers, vendors and general public all make it challenging to manage and control corporate messaging and PR. Surely you have heard somebody promoting social media as a silver bullet or band-aid for all PR issues? Therein lies the danger…and the opportunity. It’s very easy to make PR blunders with social media, simply because you cannot control it. Then how do you learn to use social media, work with it, exploit its potential fully and make it an integral component of your PR toolkit?

About Janet*:
Janet Fouts, is a social media coach, author, speaker and entrepreneur who helps individuals and corporations use social media tools effectively and efficiently. Her recent titles, Social Media Success! and #SOCIALMEDIA NONPROFIT tweet drew on her 15 years of experience in online marketing and social media, working in the trenches with businesses of all sizes. In addition to her coaching practice, Janet is Founder of the Social Media Coaching Center and Senior Partner at Tatu Digital Media, an award-winning, San Jose-based web design and development firm. She generously shares her knowledge and expertise on JanetFouts.com.

You can order a copy of ‘#SOCIALMEDIAPRtweet’ online at Happy About (the publisher’s site).

Next, I would like to introduce you to a book on the business book list on Amazon: ‘The Seed: Finding Purpose and Happiness in Life and Work.

‘The Seed’ by Jon Gordon

This book came out recently on the new releases (business) list on Amazon.

“Why am I here? What is my purpose? Is this what my life is supposed to be?

Great questions! Jon Gordon’s new book, The Seed, helps readers discover the answer. Through a wonderful story about a man given a two week leave of absence by his employer to, essentially, contemplate and renew his commitment to his job, we learn a method to explore our own satisfaction and find our purpose. The keys are, first, being open to discovery and, second, being open to the possibility that we may already be living our purpose but are missing the realization of, and passion for, that.” Eleanore Biddaulp, Amazon reviewer

About the Book
A business fable to help you discover your purpose in work and life

New from Jon Gordon, the international and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Energy Bus, The Seed takes you on a quest for the meaning and passion behind work. Josh, an up-and-comer at his company, is disenchanted with his job. Challenged by his boss to take two weeks to decide if he really wants to work there, Josh takes off for the country, where he meets a wise farmer who gives him a seed and a promise: find the right place to plant the seed, and his purpose will be revealed.

Through Josh’s journey cross-country journey, you’ll find surprising new sources of wisdom and inspiration in your own business and life.

Nobody captures the deeper meaning of business like Jon Gordon, and The Seed is his most searching and significant book yet. Whatever your profession, take this insightful look at the purpose behind work, and plant The Seed of inspiration in your life!

About Jon*:
Jon Gordon is a speaker, consultant and author of the international best seller “The Energy Bus,” “The No Complaining Rule,” “Training Camp,” “The Shark and The Goldfish” and his newest book “Soup: A Recipe to Nourish your Team and Culture.”

Jon and his books have been featured on CNN, NBC’s Today Show and in Forbes, Fast Company, O Magazine, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. His principles have been put to the test by numerous NFL coaches and teams, hospitals, Fortune 500 Companies, school districts and countless leaders in business, healthcare and education.

Jon is a graduate of Cornell University and holds a masters in teaching from Emory University. When he’s not speaking to businesses, hospitals or schools, you can find him playing tennis or lacrosse with his wife and two “high energy” children.

*courtesy of book website and/or Amazon

You can purchase a copy of ‘The Seed’ at Amazon.

What Soundbyte Do People Use to Describe YOU?

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The importance of a professional personal identity isn’t hard to explain. We all want to let business contacts see us as high caliber individuals with strong positive qualities and competence. A strong professional personal identity can differentiate and position us an irresistibly attractive asset when we want to work with a most prestigious team.

But a great professional identity more than clever packaging. It’s more than a 30-second pitch on who we are. To set our personal potential into action takes self-awareness, reflection, information, conversation, consideration, reorganization, and a vision that we can translate into action.

By identifying personal and professional brand synergies, aligning your personal brand goals to your professional pursuits you can have your cake and eat it too. By identifying opportunities that serve both your personal and professional brand objectives, you can effectively multitask, utilizing the professional support and resources at your disposal while building your own brand. Dan Schawbel

It takes work to identify, understand, define, and articulate the unique value that is your personal value proposition. But it’s worth it to get the right words, the right values, and the right talents and skills to talk about when we talk about ourselves in a business context.

It’s harder yet to take that down to a shareable sound-byte that’s clear, concise, and dead on true.

What Soundbyte Do People Use to Describe YOU?

Call Tony. He can fix anything.
That Vanessa, she’s so sweet.
If you want it organized, accurate, and complete, Anne’s the one.
Ryan’s a problem solver. He’ll have this figured out in a matter of minutes.
David will give you the shirt off his back. Don’t take it. He never forgets that he gave it.

Those soundbytes, mini-descriptions, might be accurate, or they might be legend. The point is that the people talking believe and share them. The people they’re describing have communicated those traits strongly over time.

What do people share about you when you’re not around? Being able to articulate and highlight your value can define and even change what folks share with each other about who you are.

You probably have a sense of your strengths and some of your weaknesses. It’s hard to get through school and get a job without having a sense of what they might be. But few of us actually take some time to pinpoint what they are. Take the time to determine your most outstanding assets–your highest proficiencies, your core competencies. Ask yourself these questions to gather the relevant data.

  1. What am I often asked to teach others?
  2. What responsibilities are often delegated to me?
  3. What kinds of meetings and tasks am I asked to lead?
  4. What special skills and competencies do I have that others rely on?
  5. What parts of my job description would be hardest to fill?
  6. What traits make me a valuable and unique member of the team?
  7. What work isn’t work at all?

Spend serious time reflecting on each question. Reflection is how we understand what we know. You might think about one question for set time or for a few minutes at different points in a day. As you get ideas and remember things, take notes. Write down what comes to mind. When you’ve got notes on all seven, roll up what you have gathered into one single big idea — the short bio that we hear people use all of the time — something like …

Liz can articulate what could make any product irresistible and how to turn any problem into a win.

Make your big idea a statement of your unique value in ways that others can see it, can believe in it, and can share it easily.

What is the sentence that people should be saying about you?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Does Your Business Embrace Technology Meaningfully?

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A Guest Post by
Matt Krautstrunk

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As bloggers we understand how important interacting with a community on social media is for exposure. We tend to refer to social as “new media,” however when you think about it, some of the ancient social media channels (Myspace, corporate blogs) have been around for over 7-10 years now. The progress that marketers have made on social media channels has almost pushed the medium to maturity, it’s time for corporate structure to follow!

Building Social Media Into Your Corporate Culture

Social media is being used by more and more people to accomplish almost everything from a job search to answering common questions. Just to reiterate how fast social media is growing. See below: According to Econsultancy

  • Tweets grew 250% since January 2010
  • LinkedIn Users grew 100%
  • Facebook grew from 350 million users to 640 million users in one year

But in the B2B marketing industry, social media should extend deeper than just having a LinkedIn. It should be controlled internally and leveraged within each employee. Your employees can be used as vehicles to spread messages about your company’s products and services. With this obviously comes inherent risk, but since social media such a transparent vertical there should be internal social media policies in conjunction with your marketing strategy.

Social Media Policy

Companies are still trying to find a balance whether they should encourage or hide employee social media use. Everything from, the decision to associate your businesses name with employees on social media to governing social media use, social media policies can be laid out to leverage your marketing strategy internally.

For instance, some companies have requested their employees create a separate Twitter account that is strictly professional. This has two key benefits, one is the fact that businesses are able to gain awareness and engagement from each employee’s Twitter, and the other is minimizing the risks associated with standing behind an employee who tweets inappropriate personal material. Businesses should design a clear policy framework for how social media can be used to create synergies not catastrophes.

Improving Workflow

Embracing social media within your company may have some risks, but empowering employees with social media embrace can help your cause. For example allowing employees to tweet during workdays can improve morale and communication efforts. Strategically integrating tools to work within your business can give meaning to each of your departments, according to Charlene Li, analyst at Execunet (http://insights.execunet.com/index.php/comments/creating_winning_social_media_strategies/best-practices/more) , “Anyone can be influential with these tools. Salesforce.com has a new Twitter-like product and calls the people in the company using it, the “Chatterati.” “This internal social group is the connective tissue in the organization,” Li noted. “There is real value being created as people use these tools to get the job done.” Social media is a core element of these innovative companies communication technology, making their employees better, more informed workers. There is an opportunity here for collaboration in the cloud; your employees will have the ability to express opinions and suggestions easier than ever before.

One of the biggest challenges to embracing social media internally is letting go of control. Executives should embrace this technology meaningfully instead of fearing the repercussions.

_____
Matt Krautstrunk is an expert writer on document management systems for Resource Nation an online resource that provides advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs. You can find him on Twitter as @mattkrautstrunk

Thanks Matt! Great case for taking social media seriously.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Audience Is Everything – Do You Know Your Audience as Well as You Know Yourself?

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Content Isn’t Audience, But You Knew That

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When I gave a keynote at the EdNet conference, where I met with many old and new friends in the business of publishing. I ended up in the most interesting conversation with one in particular, a man who was connected to me from years ago when publishing in print was my life. We got to talking about how publishers were facing the need to move from shelves of books to information that moved across the Internet.

He said, “I love books. I love seeing them stand on the shelves. I understand why everyone wants to keep making them. But I also see why we need to move our thoughts and ideas to PDFs.”

First I winced, then I smiled, then I laughed.

“What?” was what he said.

“You’re thinking of the paper web. A PDF is just a digital form of a paper document and almost as much of a pain. It’s not really part of the web. It’s a gated and separate location. I have to leave where I am to click over to where it is, wait for it to load, and then I’m stuck inside it. Switching back and forth takes for ever. It’s like asking me to go to the corner to buy a book.”

“Ah, I suppose I should be saying content.”

“Content on a blog or a website is easier to access. Yep that’s for sure, but content isn’t the end.”

I asked him to tilt his head to consider this question, “How many books sit on library and living room shelves that were chosen with great intentions then never read?”

If your goal is to sell books or to sell content, then keep your eye on them.
That will happen is that you’ll grow your sales and find ways to get more books in peoples hands and more visitors to your content.

But all of the thoughts that writers worried to express and the reams of ideas that could be changing the world may become good piled in the good intentions of book shelves and feed readers — parts of collections that never get read.

The book, the pdf, the website, the content isn’t the destination the audience is.

Know Your Audience as Well As You Know Yourself

An airplane traveling from New York to Chicago is off course 98% of the time. Still it gets there. Why? The pilot is always adjusting with his destination in mind. Do you listen to your best audience and tweak what you do to keep your content in their sweet spot?

The audience is your destination. If you’re writing for yourself, you’ll head in a different direction than if you’re writing for people learning what you know. It may sound obvious, but it’s still worth stating — if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re not going to get there. If you think you’re going everywhere or writing for everyone, you’ll end up nowhere.

Too often authors and bloggers don’t think through who their readers will be. As a result a blog post or a book title gets our attention but doesn’t keep us interested. Don’t write for the fad or the lastest content trend, write for the people who are exploring the idea behind it. Then when they change their direction, you can change yours with them because your relationship is with the audience not with the content.

Have you really thought through who your audience is? Here are some questions to help you do that. Take a shot at answering them all in one sentence.

  • Who am I writing for?
  • How are they like me and how are they not?
  • What do they care about?
  • What will get their interest and keep it to the very end?

Write down your audience profile. Revisit it often. Adjust it as your readership grows and you get to know them better.
Use it to guide what you choose to write.

Now that you’ve got a clear destination. Other decisions get a whole lot easier.

Do you look at what you offer from the audience view? How does that work for you?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!