Sales and Networking

As I mentioned before, I took a lunchtime sales seminar from Joe Marr, the local franchisee of the Sandler Sales Institute. What I learned in that two-hour class excited me so much, that I enrolled for the full sales training with him. Why did I sign up? I had several reasons.

• I had no real sales skills. I had never had any formal training and prior to going full-time on my business, I had never needed any. Most of my business came looking for me.
• I have no sales staff. (yet) I'm still the chief cook and bottlewasher for Cyber Data Solutions. That means that I am entrepreneur, manager, technician, and, yes, salesperson. Perhaps one day I will grow my business to a size where I have separate people for each of those jobs, but before that happens, I'll need to earn a little cash.
• They teach sales like networking.
  

That last one might seem a little confusing. After all, isn't sales all about getting people to buy, no matter what? I always thought so, which is probably why I never learned anything about sales. The way Joe teaches sales, though, it's really all about asking questions and finding out more about the prospect and the challenges they face.

This sounds more like the lessons I learned in the Certified Networker training course than the kind of things you see car salespeople doing.

Of course, the goals are slightly different. In networking you are trying to build strong relationships for mutual benefit. Using the Sandler sales techniques, the goal is to determine whether a prospect has a need for your product or service, and, if they do, to provide it to them for a fee.

Hmm. I guess when you get down to it, they are *both* about building good relationships for mutual benefit. No wonder I feel comfortable with this training!

So, what was the most recent training course that you took?

Catching Up

Just following up on a few previous posts.

The Cell Phone Blues

I wrote a short while ago about not being able to import my contact list into my new cell phone. I realize that cell companies have no real incentive to support you after you've already signed up, but I thought it a bit rude that something so obvious seemed to be ignored.

Well, it turns out that they didn't ignore it. A few hours after posting that entry, I received a response from the support request that I had placed on the Verizon site. They do indeed have such a facility...

... and they'll sell it to you for $24.95.

Fortunately, my buddy Al pointed me to the Howard Forums, where the user community has gathered everything you could possibly want to know about the cell phone industry. I started reading in the section devoted to my phone, the LG enV and within twenty minutes had found a free application called BitPIM which did everything that I needed and more.

New E-zine Issue Released

My report about the Howard Forums above is the core of my article for the most recent issue of the "Clearing Up the Confusion" E-Zine. I sent out Volume 1, Issue 2 shortly after midnight, right on schedule. Well, that's two out of two! Really, the process of creating and mailing out an e-zine is much easier than I thought it would be. I wish I had started a long time ago.

If you are interested in subscribing, go to the subscription page and follow the instructions there.

Still Waiting...

For those who were interested, I still haven't heard back from Concordia University. I presented a proposal to update their web presence at their business school on Thursday morning. I'm guessing that, in this case, no news is not necessarily good news. The project does have a time crunch, so I can't imagine that they would really want to delay any longer than necessary.

Ah, well, at least it's a better quality of rejection than I'm used to. ;-)

So, what's the coolest website, application, or online toy you've found out on the Web?

The Commitment Spreads

Back in November, I wrote about my decision to go full time on my business, Cyber Data Solutions -- how a book I had been reading led me to commit myself to a new path. Fast forward now to the beginning of January. I was sitting in our local Thai restaurant meeting with my friend Clem Boyd and relating the story to him. He got so excited that he started scribbling notes down on a small pad of paper that he had with him.

A few weeks later, he called me up to let me know that I had inspired him to quite his job and go out on his own. Wow! I guess there should be a warning label on Eker's book, "Secrets of the Millionaire Mind" -- something to the effect of "Warning: May lead you to pursue your dreams".

I met with Clem this week for coffee. He has been transformed.

He always struck me as a pretty happy guy, but, wow! He's off the chart now. He's working for himself harder than he ever worked in his former job, and he's loving every minute of it. I can't wait to see where he goes from here. I've heard some of his goals and if he completes even half of it he is going to be popular with a lot of people.

With his attitude now, I'm confident that he'll accomplish all his goals.

So, what would happen if you followed your dreams?

A New Business Experience

This morning I drove up to Concordia University, Ann Arbor, to meet with representatives from the Haab School of Business and Management. About two weeks ago, I received a request for proposals from them to update their web presence. Now, I've become a bit leery of RFPs in my professional life. Every time I have responded to one, I put in a lot of work coming up with ideas to meet the prospects needs. Then, shortly after the decision deadline I would receive my "thank you for submitting your proposal..." rejection letter. As a one-man band, spending that time didn't seem to have a very good return on investment.

This time I tried a slightly different method. Instead of just reading the RFP and creating a response, I actually called up the contact, Professor Jon Luker, and chatted with him (even though the RFP pretty much said not to call). I found out a lot more about their needs and the background behind the project that I ever would have through their written description or even what I would have learned via an email exchange. According to Professor Luker, I was the only one to have called to talk with him.

I submitted my proposal around 3pm on February 27th. By shortly after noon on the 28th I received an email from Professor Luker letting me know that I was one of three finalists. So, today I met with the committee to answer whatever questions they might have. Even if I don't get the job, it was a good meeting. I've not had any experience with the second tier of the RFP process. This was an excellent opportunity to learn and develop my skills, so the next time I jump into the fray, I will know better how to deal with the situation.

I'll keep you apprised as the situation unfolds. Given the tight timeline on this project, I expect that I will hear by tonight or early tomorrow whether I got the job or not. I am expecting not. I know one of the other three vendors to whom they were speaking and they are much better suited to this project than I am, no false modesty implied.

Hey, even if I lose out, at least I'm getting a higher quality of rejection. ;-)

So, what new business experiences have you had lately?

Take a New Vu on Your Website

I've been asked occasionally by clients, friends, family, acquaintances, and the occasional stranger walking down the street whether they should maintain their own website. My response has in general been an unequivocal "Maybe". The biggest problem was that if you wanted to actually edit a web page, you either went out and purchased a graphical web page editor (such as Dreamweaver) or you delved into the scary world of HTML yourself. The problem with the first is that those packages tended to be a little expensive ($400 on the Adobe website). The problem with the second was that, if you didn't know what you were doing, you might unwittingly change something which ended up causing the text on your website to blink in bold, red, italic font (not a pretty picture).

Then a few days ago I discovered nvu ("new view").

This cool little program is a fairly complete HTML editor. If you can handle a word processor, you can probably handle making simple web pages. If you can create a newsletter with multiple columns, pictures, captions, and a variety of fonts, you should feel right at home building gorgeous web pages.

Now, nvu isn't a perfect tool. In particular, its publishing mechanism, which should allow you to automatically upload your website to your hosting service, doesn't seem to work properly. Or at least I wasn't able to get it to work after an hour of study. Also, it can only handle HTML files (those which end in ".html" or ".htm"). If you have a more advanced site populated with PHP or ASP scripts (URLs which end in ".php" or ".asp") or scripts running out of the CGI directory (which usually contain "cgi-bin" somewhere in the URL), then you should consult with your webmaster first as nvu probably won't be able to help you.

Still for all that, this is a neat little tool especially for those who want to try to maintain their own site. It's free and it runs on Windows, Mac, and a variety of flavors of Unix. Give it a try (just be sure to save a copy of whatever it is you are going to work on).

So, how would you use this tool to update your site?