Richard Bach, American writer and author of ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’, says this about soul mates, “A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we’re pretending to be.”

First observation: The first thing that jumps out for me is that locks have a particular form to them. Imagine putting the wrong key in a lock going to the front door of your home? You wouldn’t get in would you? The older I get the more I realize life is about being who we are and not pretending. In particular, as an introvert, if you get caught up in trying to be someone you are not, like someone more extroverted, it won’t “fit your lock.” You, are your own best key.

Second observation: Then there is the issue of feeling safe. The safety blanket for me is a feeling of comfort, belonging and familiarity. Knowing that someone knows a bit about what makes you tick can be an immediate sense of connectedness without saying anything. And often times as an introvert I haven’t felt compelled to speak up because the overriding feeling of safety in being understood. It’s like when you are with family, as dysfunctional as one might be. Because we commune with family regularly it has a feeling of safety no matter where a conversation might meander off. Whether it’s a family blanket or an introvert blanket, I love feeling safe.

Third observation: But most important in Bach’s statement is that our truest selves step out. I’m not quite sure that this ever ends. I have personal memories when I tried to blend in with extroverting events. Corporate wife event where there was a good deal of chit chat that didn’t make it to far on my scale of meaningful conversation. The truth is, I was afraid as hell to just be me. That would have meant thinking before I added to the conversation or even saying good-bye before the conversation was over. It was pretense. Not only did the other corporate wives wonder about this “strange woman” but my authenticity was stifled leading to nothing good.

It’s because of knowing the introvert so well from my soul that I consider an introvert to be my soul mate.

What about you? How to you think of the term soul mate?

There’s no doubt that business collaborations are a hugely successful way for an entrepreneur or small business to grow. But, you can either curse or celebrate collaborations. Here are the top ten reasons you may be avoiding them.

1. Previous collaborations have failed you.

One of the biggest fears comes from what you may have already experienced in collaborating. It’s similar to how people answer my workshop question, “When you think of salesperson, what comes to mind?” The words captured on the easel are in line with, sleazy, high-pressure, dishonest, and the list goes on. Why? Previous experiences are on the top of mind.

2. It means working toward clearer communication.

A great number of collaboration efforts are initiated online. Email is a primary mode of communication but don’t rely it. An email that asks, “Do you get this blog?” might be answered, “No, I don’t get it.” Misinterpretation can be rampant with assumptions, poor word choice and poor listening leading the way.

3. Online it can begin to seem 140 characters is enough.

Successful collaborations because you have tens of thousands of followers, do not create a magic carpet ride flowing along the 140-character stream.

4. In-person, your presence will be required.

Nothing can replace an in-person meeting. You lose the ability for understanding the full message from people with out including the distinct advantage of meeting in-person.

5. Agreements will take more time than on your own.

Collaboration is time consuming. Instead of just one company or one person creating and delivering, there are now, two or more coming together and to create something new. The timeline is suddenly stretched out.

6. Access to collaboration tools may be required.

Working across international borders and time zones, without places to share documents or ideas momentum, can slow progress down.

7. You must be ready for personal growth on many levels.

Collaborating to create takes two, and generally slows processes down. If you are uncomfortable with delay you may add resistance to impede progress further.

8. You’ll need to be a change leader.

Buzzards, bats and bumblebees can each struggle and die when they find themselves with limited movement in any kind of container or space. If you are more of a follower to change, collaboration will beat you down like a limited container does to buzzards, bats and bumblebees.

9. Disagreements are highly likely.

Squabbles happen. You will not agree on every thing and with greater dependence on email communication over conversation, this raises the bar for more disagreement.

10. Lack of organization and little flexibility are part of your daily agenda.

The expression “Life happens!” when you are in collaboration has an echo effect of “”Life happens, happens, happens!” Things are going to come up for the each party that are unavoidable and can put your collaboration conversation on hold or even stop it.

Are these nightmares unavoidable with most collaborations? They can certainly be minimized. You can take actions, shift beliefs and find better ways of being to have more collaborations that are more dreamlike.

Collaboration Strategists, Patricia Weber & Monique MacKinnon help you discover the secrets to the process of how to land success instead of flops when taking the collaboration plunge. How To Find Your Best-Fit Joint Venture Partner With Less Time And Energy plus Entrepreneurial Joint Ventures: Psychology + Soul guarantee your collaborations become successful. Just email questions@entrepreneurialtelesummits.com for your two free excerpts.

Are you an online or in-person networker who procrastinates or hesitates with follow-up? What is the point of networking if you don’t follow-up?

Your goal really doesn’t matter – new clients, new referral partners, new collaboration partners, a new job, a needed resource. An 80% majority of people, while in a good amount of company, don’t follow-up! The 20% minority who do seem well aware that the majority of results come from ensuing communication with people you network with. Being either type, you have a one time opportunity to receive a free copy of the 63 page eBook, How to Steadily Turn Prospects Into Customers: Taking the Mystery Out of Follow-up Reluctance.

What will you find in this free guide?

- understand why we don’t follow-up based on 414 online survey respondents,
- discover what benefits in addition to greater sales results that you receive from following up,
- identify how to turn your listening into follow-up prospects love,
- uncover how to plan your follow-up to the prospective customers liking,
- get the details to three distinct ways to combine and create a system to your follow-up and
- fall in love with an under used component that can encourage you to minimize, if not eliminate your lack of follow-up.

To receive your free complete eBook, How to Steadily Turn Prospects Into Customers: Taking the Mystery Out of Follow-up Reluctance you must be one of the first 7 people to comment with a most unique and true sales or networking follow-up story, or about a most unique and true greatest fear of why you leave follow-up behind. And who decides the best comments? I do of course! With the name of Pat Persistent Weber it’s perfect.

The first 7 people to comment with either follow-up or fear stories, will receive their eBook August 31, 2010. Any others, after the first 7 and before August 31, will receive a 15 page excerpt. This is all in advance of the September sales launch which includes a 15 page free excerpt.

I want to help kick things off with what caused me to be fearful many years ago:

When I was in the computer field as a new salesperson, one of my earliest memories is of an appointment with a physician. I arrived about 15 minutes early at his office for our appointment. The doctor was coming back from surgeries at the hospital and was running late. The office manager was kind enough to spend about 10 minutes with me giving me a small summary of what she thought the accounting problems were. In the late 1970′s computers were highly sought after to increase small business success with accounts receivable. As she was finishing up, the doctor arrived – unusual it would be through the front lobby. He came directly into the front office where I was with the office manager. She introduced me. He went ballistic! “I don’t remember setting up any appointment with you? We don’t need a computer! We need employees who do their work better.” His arms were flailing, he was loud and angry. Being stunned, I apologized and made an exit.

It was 3 or 4 months before I was able to earn my reputation back on the sales team as Pat Persistent Weber. You see I made many follow-up cold calls and had a high appointment rate because of my follow-up. Procrastination hit me like a plague from fear of turning the next follow-up into a disastrous affair.

Want to overcome your follow-up reluctance?

What’s your story: Follow-up or fear? You could win your free guide!

1. Within 24 hours either call or email any contact you want to get to know better merely thanking them for a “fabulous” meeting. Leave your sales pitch behind.

2. Within 48 hours send a handwritten note, you can use SendOutCards to make this easy, without even going to the card shop. Express your interest in a future discussion about what their needs might be. Yes; this is a more appropriate place to move the sales conversation forward.

3. Be sure to meet with anyone you believe you could refer business to or receive referrals from within about a week. Life goes on and so might their top-of-awareness of you.

After the 48 hour to one week follow-up plan, schedule your longer term follow-up.

4. Consider your average sales cycle. My sales cycle for my coaching and training services is long – sometimes 6 to 24 months. So in my plan, I have at a minimum, a quarterly follow-up. Even Internet products can have a long cycle so create 7 to 12 autoresponder emails to make this automatic and easy for you.

5. What on earth do you follow-up about over the long term? Start with your prospective clients interests. You are building a relationship and when that prospective client is ready to buy, you’ll stand out from others when you show you were listening to their interests. For example, let’s say you hear your prospect likes red wines. Something comes across your radar screen about a highly rated red wine. Call, email, Tweet or direct message your client to let them know you believe this little tidbit will be of interest.

Another example is to send them a birthday card. There is no better way than this to get more personal. I mean who doesn’t like receiving a real paper greeting card in the mail?

6. If you purposefully reduce the information you share right from the get go, it will leave you other valid business reasons to follow-up. So you have maybe 10 products for people to consider. First of all, if you are other focused from the get-go you won’t fall in the trap of letting loose a flock of pigeons, that is, just rattling off your offering in a long list. You do know what a flock of pigeons can do? Instead, focus on one or two offerings. This leaves you the opportunity for mention of 8 others in your follow-up.

Speed networking can put you on the fast track to more sales results when you plan out a system for your follow-up. Diversify the degree of closeness to your prospect and include everything from a spontaneous telephone call to meeting in-person for coffee or the like to anything that is more removed like email.

How will you use these ideas to act on a planned approach to your networking follow-up?

Aye yae yae – all the time and energy goes to setting things up for someone else’s timing.

The pace of your follow-up after any kind of meeting, speed networking or networking in general, should match both your style and your prospective customers. Everyone is unique. How do you know then whether the schedule might be monthly, quarterly or something else? How do you know what to include in your follow-up plan?

Several criteria to consider:
- Have you asked your prospective customer or client their preference of follow-up? Some people do better with telephone, others email and others in-person.
- Is your follow-up message weighted more toward building a relationship or just asking for a decision? The follow-up is both about selling and building the relationship at the same time. NOTE: shift your focus to helping the person buy and it will minimize you possible queasy factor with selling. When you help another person to buy you can’t help but want to understand their needs more.
- Will your frequency be enough to cut through the clutter and keep your name at the top of your contact’s mind? You need to understand your prospects style to tailor this.
- Are you mixing educational or editorial messages with advertorial or marketing information? If all you are going to do is talk about about you, your company, your sale, yourself, it’s weighted too heavily on one side. Talk with you prospective client about things that you heard them say interested them.
- Are you being yourself? If you are an introvert the follow-up is where your strengths with shine: listening, being more curious and wanting to maintain the relationship to preserve your own energy. If you are an extrovert you may want to strengthen your: focus on the planning and then be your natural gregarious self while you strengthen you listening.
- Are you being personal?

Follow-up can be systematized and within the system you can tailor to each person’s unique buying style.

Yes; you can send too many messages, leave too many voice mails, send too many cards. The likelihood of this with most people is slim because anywhere from 80% to 99% of business owners and salespeople don’t follow-up at all!

No; you can’t necessarily follow-up too quickly. You want to follow-up according to the other person’s seeming decision making style. Some follow-up will be speedy, some follow-up will be slower. Take the pace of your prospect.

Maybe; if you start following up mid-year with all the people you have already net through any networking, you won’t need to attend any new networking events! You will begin to help prospects make decisions that favor purchasing your product or service which you introduced to them earlier in the year. No curdled cream.

We’ll be wrapping up this series with a follow-up plan that you can fit your own product or service.

But what other criteria do you believe you want to consider to continue to be the best you that you can be in your follow-up?

1. When you network you are beginning a conversation, and if you’ve followed some of the other tips to prepare, you’ve likely stirred someone’s curiosity to know more. NOTE: Introverts, networking is a place to begin a deep conversation not to attempt to have the entire discussion. Put on your planning forte when networking. The first encounter is not filled with small talk but instead a small amount of meaningful talk.
2. If you leave your networking at the event, or even worst, make one feeble attempt with email or voice mail to follow-up with someone, you’ve now possibly created a conundrum for the other person in new relationship.
3. If you haven’t focused your niche, your target, you’ll leave thinking, “All of these people are my prospects!” That can be your Achilles heel because of the overwhelm feeling of some much to do now that can lead to inaction.
4. The very nature of speed networking is an organic process. To avoid follow through that moves things along to the next likely action is like a cream beginning to curdle.
5. Your time and energy at any one singular event are just planted seeds of the networking process. For those seeds to grow into any might oak tree, a trusting and meaningful relationship, you have to nourish those seeds. Nourishing any relationship that you deem you want to take further means – a planned follow-up that you purposefully act on.

Okay, are you thinking any differently about your speed networking?

Have any of these questions taken your focus off of you? I’m asking you to consider what you have stirred up in other people with your exuberant enthusiasm during any one singular event.

Are you thinking about what your follow-up plan might include? Great! Because that’s where we are headed in the last of this series of making your speed networking most effective for you.

I like speed networking because formal networking events should never be about selling, they should be about meeting people and at best peaking their interest in your product or service. But of course most of us avid networkers also happen to be consummate sales people so we often run dangerously close to giving a sales presentation.

In networking in general the aim should be about exchanging essential fundamental information then following up appropriately with those you meet.

A way to help the process along, particularly as it pertains to speed networking is to have a business card that carries the fundamental information you need to convey. In this way your business card can do some of the talking for you as well as reinforcing the parts of your message you have communicated verbally. A kind of “speed pass.”

I believe it is courteous to give someone your business card when you meet because it reinforces your name and your company name. This is particularly true when you have an unusual name. For instance my name is Reno. Some people are not sure right away if they heard it correctly. Is it Remo with an M or Rico with a C? No, it is Reno with an N like Nevada. In a speed networking situation we might avoid that verbal exchange with a business card exchange instead.

The next question is “what do you do?” If my card is in front of you with a picture of a clap-board and a great big VIDEO for the WEB. It reinforces what I am saying. If a person can hear what you are saying and read it simultaneously they are more likely to remember your message. Maybe include a picture of your product or a logo that reinforces your service, company name or brand.

So speed up your speed networking by exchanging cards early in the process. Then be sure your business card reinforces your message with a clear indication of the types of products or service you provide.

Hopefully this took less than three minutes to read, now go click on another article. Oh! We’re not speed blogging? Well anyway look around at some of the other cool blog articles while you’re here. Hang around what’s the rush.

Reno Lovison is the author of “Turn Your Business Card Into Business” and the producer of web videos specializing in book video trailers for authors. Visit his websites at www.businesscardtobusiness.com and www.authorsbroadcast.com

Wow. Courteous in networking! How refreshing to hear that.

How do you think you will use your business card in the next speed networking event?

Ever heard the popular saying, “Be careful what you wish for, or else you just might get it”? The irony of this statement is that while you will receive what you asked for (aka your gift):

Result #1: It will not necessarily be what you bargained for.

What you need to know: You cannot bargain with God, the Universe, or the Divine. What (s)he dishes out to you is food for fodder and follow up. For instance, if you and your spouse want to spend more time with the family and the latter loses his or her job, you will have received what you asked for. However, you may not be fond of how this gift showed up in your life. Similarly, if you will soon be experiencing the empty nest syndrome and the both or just one of you has to temporarily relocate so you can find work, this may be happening to strengthen the respect, gratitude and bond between the two of you. Consequently, your relationship will be called to go through a shift so that it can withstand this inevitable change in life stages. How you manage this change (with a focus on faith or fear) will determine the future direction and quality of your relationship. That is, if your subconscious is filled with fear while your conscious mind is focused on faith, you will experience external conflicts (including chaos and confusion) because you will be internally conflicted. So, it is important that you practice consistently focusing on faith in action, instead of fear in action or faith without action. Got it?

Result #2: You will like parts of what you receive, while you may dislike other aspects.

What you need to know: Whatever is still a duality in your life, you will attract this lack of harmonizing to you. Case in point, if you are an intellect and truly respect that about yourself, the Universe may send you gifts that will help you strengthen the weak link in your Create Prosperity Formula, between Decision and Action. And you will respond to this cue to get out of your head and into your body and trusting your intuition or inspiration in one of two ways: You will make a yes or no decision. Or you will choose to not decide, which is still a decision.

Result #3: You will never feel 100 percent ready or prepared for this gift.

What you need to know: In fact, you may even initially resist the gift. As Nicky VanValkenburgh had mentioned in her article Put your brain’s “overactive security guard” to work for you!, “your amydgala is an overactive security guard, always trying to protect you from negative emotions”. It also works hard to maintain your status quo. For example, if you are called to be more real and intimate with your clients, while you may attract an ideal client (= your wish), you will have times where you are challenged (called growth spurts) to be more real and intimate than you have ever been before. If you believe that intimacy is meant to be all neat and tidy and not all emotionally messy, then you may resist this opportunity to grow your intimacy muscle and it will feel painful. Or conversely, you may embrace it and all involved with benefit from it.

So you see, this is how can you become masterful at receiving: Become aware (not ignorant) of what you need to know, starting with the three points above. Then become fully committed to using and sharing with your loved ones and peeps the gifts you ask for and receive.

I could comment beyond saying that this is a powerful message for anyone having difficulty receiving. But I want to give you room to say, what key idea stands out for you? Can you relate to the experiences?

1. If you are a slower speaker, there are about 175 words in a typical 60 second elevator pitch and if you hail from the north, like New York, you can squeeze in about 225.
2. Try, just do it, and allow the other person to talk first if you tend to normally gobble the time. It’s fine to say who you are, your company name and the WHAT you solve for your perfect client. But save your full pitch until a follow-up time. Laura Sherman comments on a previous post about why this works so well.
3. As an extrovert it’s quite likely you love going first, often to the detriment of the either shy or introvert person. Look at tip #3 again and converse in this way.
4. As an introvert, you may be hesitant, but if you find the person you are partnered with going on and on and possibly intruding on your time, take a stance. Politely pipe up with, “Wait, I would like for you to at least know my name and who my best clients are.” You’ll have their attention.
5. This is not the time to go into details. After hitting on the highlights about yourself, who your ideal client is, take more interest in the other person.

Being a giver when speed networking includes giving a balance of sharing the time that you talk with still asking for what you want. When you take the time to prepare you’ll find it easy to do. If you write your pitch out and read it, you most likely won’t be your natural self. But if you write out your pitch, practice it, and then just take key points written down with you, you’ll manage your time better, make your need known and manage to share the time.

1. For your introduction, after you and your company name, and if appropriate, how many years in business or geographical boundaries you serve?
2. Describe your perfect customer referral. Write it out if needed. Remember that in a typical 60 seconds we might be able to get about 175 words in – this statistic comes from my online friend, Barbara Lopez, the Elevator Pitch Coach.
3. If you have a business resource you can offer the other person – space in a newsletter, meeting room space, a Top Ten Tips report – let them know what this is and how they can get it.
4. As you get ready to move into your next conversation, don’t let the current one end without stating your next intention. If you feel you want to connect further, say so. If you aren’t sure, say something like, “Maybe we can talk a bit further to see if there is some mutual interest.”

Even if you know the person you are opposite, offer something they may not know about you with use of the 30 Day Rule, either something that has happened to you in the past 30 days, or will happen in the next 30 days. Or, to find out more about them, either ask, what has happened in their life in the past 30 days, or what are they looking forward to in the next 30 days. As you focus on building the relationship and deepening the connection, people will appreciate your interest in making the conversation a win-win.

What tweaks have you made to your pitch to slow the flow of verbal diarrhea?