Summertime is usually a downtime for business but you shouldn’t stop networking. Take advantage of this quiet period to be creative and network in a different way by reactivating your contacts.

Since there are less events and people have more free time, use this opportunity to invite people for a social happy hour or join groups that you never joined before. It’s a good time to explore new opportunities to meet new people in new environments for new leads.

One of my favorite places to invite people for a summer cocktail when I was in New York was the Terrace at the Metropolitan Museum. With its great view and ambiance, it’s a great place to reactivate your connections. If you play golf, tennis or run in the park, invite people to join you. If you attend free concerts in Central Park invite a group of people and introduce them to each other. Have your own party or plan outdoor events or organize “Me Time” at the spa. These are some of the creative ways to take advantage of the relaxed pace of summer and connect / reconnect with your old contacts, prospects or clients.

Very often social meetings will lead to business contacts because everyone, for once, won’t try to sell anything. Remember that everything doesn’t have to be about you or your business and it’s more important to be memorable and give the right impression. When you invite people unexpectedly and don’t try to sell them anything but instead, ask them how you can help them, the return on your networking time will be ten times more efficient.

A good networker is a good listener, so LISTEN and take mental notes to find out how you can help others (then write your notes down to use them later to follow-up). Do they need a specific contact or resource? Is their birthday or their kids’ birthday coming up, take not of the date. What if somebody mentions that his birthday is in two weeks, and two weeks later he receives a birthday card from you, this is one of the various opportunities to follow up. They’ll be impressed you’ll be number one on their list when they need your service or have a referral for you.

In addition to attending events and parties, summertime is a great period to track and check up on what happened since the beginning of the year. How many events you attended, how many business cards you collected, how many follow-up meetings you scheduled, and how many new clients you got from your networking efforts.

Take this opportunity to organize and update your database, formally enter your contacts on softwares like Act or Outlook, and set up a concrete follow-up system. Send a note card to say “hello” or “happy summer” or to invite them for a drink or to your party. Send postcard mailings with a marketing message, run a special offer or send a coupon or a special discount. Re-activate your contacts in one way or another but do it now! September it will be too late, everybody will be busy again and you’ll go back to your routine.

Need help to reconnect with your contacts and or set-up your follow-up system? Just give me two hours, and I will reveal 10 simple ways to reactivate your contacts so you can get tons of new clients by September.
Schedule your session to reactivate your network during the summer NOW

No one has to tell you that it’s a different world out there. The market is going through drastic changes, and you may think you need a scorecard to keep up.  Just overhearing snippets of conversations from passersby on cell phones or people sitting next to you in a coffee shop can be eye opening. Different people are experiencing different things. Even the super-wealthy are having their problems.  And it seems to be getting worse everyday. The repercussions are, and will remain, immense for an unspecified period of time. It’s akin to throwing a large rock into a pond and watching the rings span out over the surface. Eventually they will all just disappear.  And yet, the overall mood across America isn’t as depressed as you would think.

Yes, there are long-term and far-reaching effects on an international level, but guess what? Right now is the best time you may ever have for amazing opportunity and fulfilling change, not only in your career, but in your personal life as well. Most people seem to be in re-evaluation mode these days.  Just look at the very notable increase in self-help books flooding the stores lately. Suddenly everyone is an expert on how to have a perfect life, particularly during a recession. So much advice, so little time.

Guidance is actually a good thing. It can jumpstart us to enthusiastic action, but in order to create meaningful change we must first of all recognize that change is needed and then change the thought patterns and beliefs that years of conditioning have taught us. Without that, any amount of desire will never make the change stick over the long run.  Most people want to change their lives, but at the same time, they want everything to remain the same. Fear is the great enabler and we often let it control our actions even if the fear is unfounded in the present.

The Buddhist religion dictates that if you want to change the world, you must know yourself completely and separately from who you are in it. Once you know yourself your job is done. Getting to know your authentic self is usually a life-long and oft times difficult road, but everything you do, every action and word spoken, will leave a mark, a hopefully positive influence, even if it’s only one person at a time. A journey of a thousand miles starts with only one step. You have more power than you realize to make a significant difference by just being yourself.

“Recently there has been a lot of research on what creates happiness in people, and people have even come up with a happiness formula… The happy people, when they look at a situation, they see an opportunity. The unhappy people look at the same situation and see a problem. Your conditions of living, which means how much money you make, has very little to do with happiness…The happiest people are those who focus on relationships, and when they focus on relationships they are happy.” ~ Deepak Chopra on CNN’s Larry King, May 2009

Are you incorporating your own core values, integrity, and beliefs into your life and your business model? Do you know what they are? Everyone, if they’re smart, is taking stock and making changes, from the largest corporations on down to the sole prop. Relationships, more important than ever, are the key to survival in today’s business world. What does this mean to you?  Are you doing everything you can to produce results for your clients or is it all about you and how you feel?  What you project, fear, anxiety, frustration, even boredom, will come through loud and clear. If your agenda is on a different timeline or schedule than the people you are doing business with because you have bills to pay there will be friction. Timing is the maker and breaker of success. 

Getting your basics back is simply a matter of being proactive, identifying what you believe in, right now, and acting on it.  Here are a few steps to get you there:

• Take a personal inventory of your accomplishments, what you are currently working on, and what you would like to do. How do you feel about them? Separate your negative and positive reactions. When or where are you at your happiest?

• Have you outgrown your situation? If it’s something that you were once passionate about perhaps all that’s needed is a new perspective, a step back to observe without emotion. Giving up doesn’t have to be an option. Change is always possible if desired.

• Unfulfilled by the same old routines, places, whatever? Knowing when it’s time to let go, albeit painful, is the first step to somewhere else. We tend to hold on to situations and objects long after their due date because we identify ourselves, particularly our self worth with them. Understanding why we hold on to patterns of behavior that produce negative results, such as in personal relationships or careers, is a tremendous step on the road to authenticity. What do you want? What do you have to do to get it?

Getting organized, clearing out the clutter, and stream lining can lend a sense of instant wellbeing and newness to your world. It also helps you to focus, curb needless worry, and conquer your fears. Taking action is empowering! You have more options than you may realize. It’s a matter of re-discovering your wonderful self and taking that first step.

RESOURCES:

www.Robkaye.com                                             The Law of Success by Napolean Hill

www.Smileandmove.com                                 The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

www.Cloutetcetera.com

I was never supposed to be a sales trainer, coach and author. I was supposed to be a ballerina. Many years ago however, I needed a day job, so I got a job with a telemarketing company and the rest is history. Here I am many years later, “The Queen of Cold Calling.”

Dancing is still my great passion and in spite of the years and many injuries, I still dance. Recently, I started taking a ballet class with a new teacher. At that point I was going through a period of pain and frustration due to an old dance injury.

During my first class with the new teacher, she pointed out to me that I was not initiating my leg movements from my foot. This is a ballet basic. All leg movements initiate from the foot. Because I was not initiating the movement properly, I was engaging the wrong muscles. The teacher suggested that this might be the cause of my pain. And you know what? She was right. By focusing on initiating my leg movements from my foot, the pain from the old injury started to subside!

I knew that in ballet all leg movements are initiated from the foot. I’ve been dancing since I was a small child, I’ve even taught ballet classes. At another time, I might have been the teacher making that particular correction to a student. And certainly, if someone had given me a test and asked that question, I would have aced it. It wasn’t that I didn’t know, it was that for many different reasons, I wasn’t doing.

So what does this have to do with sales?

If you’ve been in sales for a while, you probably know at least some of the basics. You’ve probably done the Sales 101, features and benefits and have at least heard of some of the tools and techniques touted by sales superstars and sales trainers. You may have visited bookstores, flipped through a few books and said to yourself, “I know all of that.” You may have looked at different training courses, looked at the agenda and said to yourself, “I know all of that.”

Wouldn’t it be great if you could simply take a test proving what you know and that customers would then flock to you based on your test results?

Unfortunately, selling is not about what you know. Selling is about what you do, consistently, time after time, with every prospect with whom you speak.

There is a huge difference between knowing something and actually implementing it. And there’s an even bigger difference between being able to implement something and having totally mastered a skill.

The people who are most successful in sales are not necessarily the ones who know the most. They are, however, the ones who have mastered certain skills (and they’re frequently very basic skills) and they are able to use those same skills over and over again, and that’s why they’re successful.

If you are new to selling you need to learn the basic tools of your craft (‘what you know’) and then focus on using them all the time (‘what you do’). If you’ve been in sales for a while, focus on making your skills consistent (‘what you do’). And if your sales process is not working for you, the question to ask yourself is: Am I using what I know about selling consistently each and every time that I speak with a prospect?

It is just like me in my dance class. I certainly knew that all leg movements initiate from the foot. I’ve known it for years. It’s a ballet basic. I simply wasn’t doing it and because I was not doing it, I was in pain.

If your sales process is causing you pain, go back to the basics. Look not just at what you know, look at what you are doing about what you know. You might need some help to do this, an outside eye (like my dance teacher) to help you evaluate. Ask a colleague, your manager or perhaps a coach to help you analyze and ascertain that you are implementing what you need to be implementing in every step of your process. If you do this, like me with my old dance injury, the pain should subside.

Wendy Weiss, “The Queen of Cold Calling,” is a sales trainer, author and sales coach. Contact her at wendy@wendyweiss.com. Get Wendy’s free Special Report, How to Write an Effective Cold Calling Script, at http://www.wendyweiss.com.

After spending the last four years organizing business networking events, I still don’t have the answer to why some people go to them.
The only goal for most people who attend networking events seems to be to collect business cards. They have the feeling of a great event if they come back home with 30 or more business cards.

How many of you follow up with everybody after each event?
How many people who you met follow up with you?
When I train people on networking, either one-on-one or in a group and ask those two questions, I usually have the same answer.
“Oh yes I follow-up, I send an email the next day”. My next question is, “What do you do after this email?” and the usual answer is, “Well, nothing, because I don’t know what to do next”.
So what is the purpose of spending two to three hours at a networking event and pay $20 to $50 each time, if it is just to go and say hello to some people who you will never contact again. Repeat the process two to three times a week, and this is a big waste of time AND money.
I recently attended a business expo, and, of course I met a number of people. I didn’t take everybody’s’ business cards, only the ones I had an interest in. I also spoke with the owners of two different booths, because they had a product I was interested in purchasing. I asked all of my questions, explained why I needed the product, gave them my card, and asked them to contact me to close the sale after the expo. This was a very easy sell for them, but guest what? None of them followed up with me or even returned my e-mails. Well, they both lost a sale, because I didn’t find them to be very professional.
I guess that if they didn’t follow-up with me, chances are that they didn’t follow-up with other people either. So what was the purpose of having a table at this expo?
What is your goal when you attend a networking event? Are you trying to get new contacts to buy your product or service, or do you give the opportunity for people to get to know you, as the first step of your networking system?
People are always surprised in my training when I say that I never try to sell anything during an event. One of my secrets is that my business card mentions, “The Connection Queen”, which usually gets me lots of comments and questions:
“How do you speak with strangers?”,
“How do you introduce yourself without being pitchy?”
“How to you leave people if you are not interested in what they are doing?”, and so on.
My only purpose is to listen to people, see how I can give them a contact, a resource, or some advice. It shows them my expertise without selling anything, but offering them to participate in my free e-course, “15 Ways to Maximize Your Networking Results”, to get the answer to all of their questions. Offering them my free e-course is a way to get them to sign-up for my weekly newsletter and get a chance to know me, trust me, and later, buy my product or service when they are ready.
I attend networking events to build a long-term relationship with people, not to collect business cards or to sell anything.

So why do you network?
Try to think of your strategy for a moment. Test different approaches; stop selling and start implementing a follow-up system. You will get much more results and will attract your ideal clients, and only your ideal clients, the ones who really appreciate your services. Clients who like and trust you, clients who respect your knowledge and experience, and, very importantly, clients who will work with you in the long term, will refer you to people like them. This means more ideal clients.

One of the reasons that many people start their own home-business is for the many tax advantages that are available to people working from home. If you are running your business from home then you could get tax deductions for a portion of your home, some of the costs of the business, etc. If you are a home business owner, or looking at starting your own home-based business, then you should look into what tax benefits will apply to you.

Home-Based Business Owners Can Get a Tax Benefit on their Home

One of the tax benefits you can often get as a home-based business owner is for a portion of your rent or mortgage costs. The room in which you run your business will be considered as business property and so you may be able to get a tax benefit for the area of that room. You may also be eligible to deduct a potion of your phone, electricity, cleaner or even your garbage pick up! The possibilities for deductions are nearly limitless. Speak to a tax consultant or accountant about whether you are eligible for a tax benefit here.

Tax Benefits on Travel Expenses

Another benefit that you can receive is for your travel expenses. If you regularly travel from your home to client’s premises then ask about the tax benefit available for this in your area. You will often be able to lower your tax amount by calculating how much money you are spending on travel expenses.

Business Materials

What materials do you use specifically for your home-based business? These can be research materials for writers, film or printing paper for photographers, or other specific materials. By keeping a careful record of these expenses, you may also be able to receive tax benefits on these expenditures as they are considered for business use.

Business Conferences and Trips

Do you go to conferences related to your home-based business? Does your home-based business require traveling occasionally or regularly? Take note of the expenses related to business conferences and trips and find out what tax benefit you can obtain for these items of expenditure.

One of the advantages of having your own home-based business is the tax benefits that you can obtain from working from home. You may be able to get a benefit on a portion of your loan or house rental, travel expenses, business materials and various other business costs, such as conferences and travel. Speak to a tax consultant or accountant about what benefits you can get working from home.

We live and work in an extremely fast paced world where technology has provided us with the tools to more easily perform our jobs.  However, the pace at which we all work coupled with the instant access to information has made it more important than ever for us to maintain a healthy work-life balance.  In order to do so, we need to revisit those basic organizing procedures that may have been more faithfully followed when we weren’t so tech savvy. In addition, the current need to do more with less has made it necessary to re-assess our work flow to ensure that we are being as efficient as possible.  If this isn’t the case, some business organizing solutions should be adopted which will enable us to begin to function at increased efficiency. It is time to put some of those tried and true organizing practices back into play.

Here are some business organizing tips to get you started:

To-Do List: This is a great tool for keeping track of all that needs to be done.  It is a living document that can be continuously updated.  Every time a viable task or project comes to mind that needs to be addressed it should be added to this list.  It is necessary to ascertain the importance of a task prior to its inclusion on this list.  While we might like to pursue every idea that comes to mind, in reality there isn’t enough time to do so.  Hence, it is imperative to weed out the non-essential tasks and to leave them off this list.

Prioritize Tasks:  Once you have created an ongoing to-do list, it is important to periodically review the tasks on the list and establish a criteria for prioritizing them since it will be impossible to tackle them all at one time.  In establishing the criteria consider issues like pending deadlines, financial impact and workflow implications. Identify the top 2-3 priorities for each day and focus on them. By limiting the number of top priorities, you will have a definitive goal and will be more likely to be successful.  It is most advantageous if the priorities for each day are set the night before – that way you will be able “to hit the ground running” each morning.

Plan Your Work/Work Your Plan:  Before diving into a project, take a step back and assess what needs to be done to produce the desired result.  In doing so, identify the steps that should be taken, the order in which the tasks need to be tackled, the amount of time required and the additional assistance or information that will be needed. Once this has been done, you can be assured that your approach is the most efficient means to the end.

With a well thought out plan, there is a definitive focus so that all involved will have a clear understanding of their assignments and hence be better able to manage their own time and priorities.

Book Time For Tasks:  With the typical daily interruptions, there are days where you can still be checking the morning e-mails and it is almost lunch time.  This is why it is crucial that time is scheduled on your calendar to work on each day’s priorities. As complex tasks will require more time, blocking out time on a number of days to handle them is highly recommended.  This should be done at the start of the task so that the time will be on reserve should needed. In addition, since you will be working on these priorities at specified intervals across a series of days, you shouldn’t find yourself with a looming deadline and a ton of work still to be done when you would rather be wrapping up your day.

Being more productive at work allows us all to accomplish more, to limit the number of 14-hour days and be able to take well-deserved time off over the weekend.  This should be everyone’s objective and is possible…all we need to do is to get organized!

The current economic landscape looks dismal and challenging, marked by millions of layoffs, dwindling investments, and untold personal and professional uncertainty.

It’s enough to send any sane person into a state of fear and panic, isn’t it?

But fear and panic don’t lead to progress and opportunity.

The world is changing, perhaps faster than any of us would like. Yet our personal success and happiness rely on our ability to adapt to changes, instead of worrying about changes beyond our control. If we look at life through this perspective we can learn to dance gracefully on shifting sands by unleashing our creativity and connecting to our inner rhythm.

Wallflower or Dancer Extraordinaire?

Each day we dance – whether with partners in a corporate/business dance, in our shared cadence with family and friends, and even in solitary footsteps. While we respond to life’s tempo, we constantly seek to stay balanced with each delicate move.

Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst and humanistic philosopher, said, “Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.” What could be more uncertain than trying to balance our separate dances on today’s landscape of shifting sands?

I hear my own inner voice asking, “Are you crazy? It isn’t possible to stay in rhythm when the landscape is constantly changing. I am only comfortable with my feet firmly planted on familiar, solid ground, where I can see the road ahead.”

Unfortunately, few of us have the luxury of listening to our inner voice, and, as scary as it may seem, we all must put our creative juices to work and start mastering this “dance on shifting sands.”

How? By discovering our inner rhythm, where our values and creativity reside.

Finding Your Rhythm

Our inner rhythm is who we are in the world and the “what” that guides us around the dance floor of life – whether moving to an ever-changing fugue of uncertainty or to a steady, smooth waltz.

Changing course and identifying the right path to follow in difficult times take risk, courage and an internal compass. Our inner rhythm can provide the strength to stand solidly in a place of creativity and power, making it easier to accomplish our goals.

To find this balance, we must let go of old, awkward and out-of-sync moves that keep us stuck because they feel comfortable and safe. Once we let go of those clumsy, obsolete steps, we are free to learn new movements that allow us to experience life to the fullest. Creating change, like learning to dance, can be challenging, takes practice, and rarely happens as quickly as we would like.

Moving Through Change with Grace

Is your inner rhythm moving in concert with your outer world, or is it out of sync because you’re scrambling to find the next steps?

Find your rhythm by exploring new ways of facing your biggest fear or concern, asking yourself, “What is at stake? How can I turn this challenge into an opportunity, and who do I want to become to make this happen?”

Do you seek to become bolder, a risk-taker who lets go of old beliefs that have kept you stuck?
     ·    If so, where do you need to stand to gain a new perspective and adjust your thinking?
     ·    What is the cost of remaining planted where you are?
     ·    Finally, what do you want to achieve at the end of your journey?

Give your creativity permission to play. Learn to hear your own “inner rhythm” – whether you’re maneuvering everyday challenges or tap-dancing through life transitions. Listen to your cadence when you are scared, but face your fear by taking risks.

As your confidence builds, you’ll begin to glide effortlessly across the dance floor of your life with comfort and grace, even in uncertain times.

Get Moving

Will you remain a wallflower in your own life’s dance, waiting for an invitation because you are too afraid you’ll lose your balance?

Or will you become a dancer extraordinaire, willing to step onto the stage, confident your inner rhythm will lead your way?

Step forward and start learning the art of dancing on shifting sands.

During our last WomenandBiz.com writers’ networking meeting, one of our contributors, Laura Allen, suggested the theme Back to Basics. Regardless of your business situation, it is important not to overlook the basics of running a successful business.

Here are a few basic and essential suggestions to keep in mind:

• Treat clients well – return phone calls and emails in a timely manner, send thank you notes, listen to their needs and make sure you can deliver results that will exceed your clients’ expectations, and follow up.
• Use free or low cost tools to promote your business – have a well-designed website with relevant content, start and maintain a blog, research social networking sites to see which ones make sense for you to join.
• Attend networking events – make sure you are meeting people who can become a client, be a source of wisdom, or provide you with a referral, and remember to follow up with them.
• Promote word of mouth – consider offering a gift, a report/white paper, or discounts to those who refer clients to you.
• Build your email list - offer the option on your website for your visitors to subscribe to your e-newsletters.
• Control Inventory - have systems in place to keep control of inventory, to avoid or minimize shrinkage and losses. The inventory information is also useful when planning your production.
• Keep track of your books – understand your cash flow, keep track of money coming in and out, review your expenses, cut costs when possible without sacrificing quality.

Feel free to post your comments and share with us how you are going back to basics to build your business. You can reach us by filling out the Contact us form on the About us page.

Success,

Elisa Balabram

Founder and Editor, WomenandBiz.com