Sales IT Tech

Dale Carnegie Sales Trainers - Make Your Blog Posts Easy To Find With These Two Tips

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 06:18:00 +0000

Here's another post for all of you Dale Carnegie trainers and sales reps using Blogger.

In the last tip we looked at how you could optimize the blog title for your particular business keyphrases. Next, we're going to take a peek at optimizing the title page of each individual blog post. But before we address how Blogger creates the actual posts titles, you need to verify that your blog is creating separate pages for each of your posts and not just appending your text to a monthly archive page.

Searching Through Dale Carnegie Blogs Reveals Two Different Blogger Structures

While cruising some of the your blogs in Blogger, I noticed that a few were behaving differently from the majority of the others. Take a look at the following. Click on any screenshot to enlarge:

This is the Dale Carnegie blog I created on Blogger for the last demo. We see the Blogger Title at point 1, the actual URL at point 2, and the Blog Title again at point 3. Everything looks good until we put the mouse over the first link, the post title, “Sales Presentation Tips For Sales People”.

Like we pointed out on the Laptop Security For Sales People blog, putting the mouse over any particular link you are interested in will reveal the destination URL down below in the browser's status bar, as seen at point 4.

Notice what happens when we click the link:

Notice how the title has changed in point 1. Remember that whatever is shown in the browser title bar is reflective of the changes in the Title Tag, one of the the things that the different search engines look at to determine what your page is about.

Now notice the change in the URL at point 2. That hash mark (#) indicates a specific place on the page that the browser positions at the top of viewing screen.

The post title at point 3 is the specific location on the page that the URL is pointing to and is now at the top of the page.

And if you look down at point 4, you will see the destination URL of the next blog post that my mouse is hovering over. Surprisingly, the only difference between the current blog post and the next blog post is the number after the hash (#) mark.

This is important because it means that all of my blog posts on this blog are here on the same page only at different locations.

See what happens when the next link is clicked:

Now the URL that was in the browser's status bar is now the current URL in the browser's address bar, shown in point 2.

The new blog post title has been moved to the top of the screen view, shown in point 3.

And my mouse is positioned over the next blog post which is revealed in the browser status bar at point 4.

The only thing that hasn't changed is the Title Tag which is revealed in the browser title bar, shown in point 1.

So, what does all of this mean?

If your Blogger blog is behaving like this, then it means you aren't optimizing your post titles and your blog to be found by the search engines.

And you aren't optimizing your post titles to leverage your marketable keyphrases that your potential clients are searching for.

While your main keyphrase, “Dale Carnegie” is still in the title of your blog and prominently visible to the search engines, no other keyphrases ever enter your titles. These are keyphrases are significant to your overall business, such as sales training or leadership training or communication skills.

So how do you optimize your blog posts to be found on the search engines?

How to Optimize Your Blogger Posts

First open your Blogger dashboard and click the “Settings” link.

Then click the “Archive” link

The screen that comes up controls how blog posts are created in your blog. With the current structure, posts are grouped according to their creation date and appended to their respective pages. In this example, each page represents a month and holds all of the posts for that month. Naturally, the title of the page uses the date in its title.

Under the section entitled “Enable Post Pages?” changing the value in the drop down box from “No” to “Yes” will give each of your posts individual and unique web pages, each with their unique and individual titles. This will enable you to optimize each of your posts according to specific keyphrases.

Go ahead and change the value to “Yes” and then save the settings.

Blogger Posts As Separate Optimized Pages

Now, the main page of our Blogger blog looks like it did before. The title, the URL and the page title all looks the same as they did in the first screenshot with one exception.

Wen rolling the mouse over the title of the first post, the destination URL looks different as seen in point 4. There is no hash marks seen in the URL and it actually has some pretty sweet keywords and keyphrases included in its makeup.

Clicking a post title link that talks about communication provides a different kind of post page:

In point 1, we see that the the phrase included in the Title tags now actually includes keyphrases that are relevant to the post topic. Not only that, but the URL in point 2 also has some very useful keyphrases.

The title of the blog hasn't changed as seen in point 3. However, the title of the post seen in point 4, is now included in some other vital points in our blog structure.

So here are your next two tips:

Change the way your Blogger blog sets up its posts pages and you'll increase your search engine exposure by increasing the number of Title Tags that the search engines can find.

Include your keyphrases in your post titles and you'll start attracting more of the people looking for your specialized topics.

Incidentally, setting your posts up as separate pages also gives you some measure of control over your other meta tags as well. We'll take a look at that in a later post.

That’s all for this post. In the next post we'll take a deeper look at the post titles.

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Good Hunting!

Blogger Title Optimization Tip For Dale Carnegie Sales Consultants

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 21:38:00 +0000

Making Your Blogger Blog Easy To Find

As a Dale Carnegie Instructor or sales consultant updating a blog on Blogger, when we push that "publish" button and post our ideas on our blog, one of our objectives is to have someone on the Web read it and make use of the information we are providing.

As trainers, we publish our posts so that our participants can have access to additional ideas and explanations on what we covered in a particular session.

As sales consultants selling to a particular group of clients, we want to display how some of our other clients in a similar industry have gained specific benefits from some of the training programs that we offer.

And as a franchise owner , we probably want to highlight some of the additional benefits of a new program that we are offering, like a one-day seminar on cold calling.

Whatever reason we are putting our thoughts out there on the Web, one thing is certain—we have a certain audience in mind when we created the post. And typically this audience is a group of people that we’ve done business with in the past. They know us, they’ve received email from us, or they received a phone call from us. They know wd exist and they know about our blog.

However, there is another audience that you can get our information to, and unfortunately, there’s a little more research and tweaking that needs to be done on Blogger before you can reach them.

These are the people that don’t know about you, they don’t know that you exist, and they’ve never heard a peep from you, ever. They’ve never received a phone call from you, never received an email from you, and they have never received any type of direct mail pieces from you.

But they get on one of the search engines every day and they search for topics regarding “Sales Training”, or “Leadership Training” or sometimes even, “Dale Carnegie Training”.

Factors That Impact Your Search Engine Visibility

When your clients go online and initiate their search for something like “Dale Carnegie Training”, typically they will turn to Google for assistance. They will type in something like “Dale Carnegie Training” or “Dale Carnegie Training in Cleveland” or “Dale Carnegie Training for sales people” and tell Google to go off and find all of the pages dealing with the subject of their particular search. These phrases are referred to as the keywords or keyphrases.

Now, no one knows for certain what factors are at play in Google’s algorithm except the people that work at Google. However there is a mountain of empirical data suggesting that certain things need to be on your pages to make them relevant for a particular search.

So, if someone is on their laptop and types “Dale Carnegie Training” into the Google search engine, the Google search engine will run off with the keyphrase, check it’s database of indexed pages, and see which pages are relevant for the term “Dale Carnegie Training”. It will then rank the results in order of importance before displaying the results to the end user.

What kinds of things does the Google Search Engine consider relevent when culling though its indexed database in search of pages that reference Dale Carnegie Training? Well, things like how many times the term “Dale Carnegie Training” is referenced in the body of the page. How close to the top of the page “Dale Carnegie Training” occurs. The number of other pages that link to the page.

And if “Dale Carnegie Training” is in the title of the page.

Think of it this way. If you were to go to the public library (yes, Amazon hasn’t chased them all away) and search for books dealing with “Dale Carnegie”, you would consider a book entitled “Dale Carnegie’s 30 Human Relations Principles”, or “Dale Carnegie’s Effective Speaking Strategy” to be highly relevant. However, you would consider a book entitled, “Great Public Speakers of the Early 20th Century” or “Giants in the Field of Professional Development” as less relevant to your search, even if there are some references to Dale Carnegie inside the book. The Google search engine will do something similar.

How To Make Your Blogger Blog Friendlier To The Search Engines

So here is your first tip.

If you want your blog to rank high for a keyword or keyphrase pertaining to your business, put the keyword or keyphrase in the title of your blog. In your case, if you want your blog to be relevant in searches for “Dale Carnegie”, put “Dale Carnegie” in your blog title.

Now do you absolutely need “Dale Carnegie” in the title? Well, you don’t have to put it in. But the keyword or keyphrase that you select should reflect the general topic and theme of your blog.

So if you were to create a blog that dealt specifically with the sales process, having the keyphrase, “Sales Strategy”, “Sales Tactics”, “Sales Cold Calling”, or “Sales Objections” might be the beginning of a useful set of keyphrase for you and one of those will be the start of a great title for your blog.

So how do you modify the title of your Blogger blog to contain your theme oriented keyphrase?

Glad you asked!

Check it out:

In this first frame, we see the standard Blogger dashboard when you log into your account and the number of Blogger blogs that you have control over. Here, I’ve created two test blogs, one specifically for all of you crazy Dale Carnegie Trainers and sales consultants to illustrate the point.

And here we see what the blog actually looks like. There are a couple of points to note here. When someone pulls up your web page or your blog, they will see the title reflected in (1) the browser title bar, (3) the current working tab, (5) the actual title on the blog, and (4) the taskbar menu button. The URL located in the address bar (2) is the actual web address of your blog. If you were in a hurry, like I was, then you probably created a blog with a URL that is the same or pretty similar to the title of your blog. This is ok unless you got in the game late and your title and URL are not reflective of the theme of your blog.

So head back over to the Blogger dashboard and hit the “settings” link. You are about to make a modification.

When you hit the “settings” link, the first section that comes up is the “basic” settings, which is good because this is where you want to make your change. The section that deals with the Title of your blog is the second entry. As you can see, the title of this blog is entered as “Dale Carnegie of Cleveland”. I’m going to change it to “Dale Carnegie of Akron”:

And hit the save button down below to save the change.

Now, refreshing the blog page yields:

Notice how the title of the blog has changed in (1) the browser title bar, (3) the active tab, (4) the taskbar button, although you can’t see it because it extends off of the button, and (5) the actual title of the blog. Also notice that the actual URL or web address of the blog (2) did not change. Like it or not, the web address you picked when you set up your blog is going to hang with you. But don’t worry. There plenty of other things to change that will help you in our quest to increase your blog’s visibility.

All of the changes you’ve seen in the browser depends on something in your blog called the title tag, which is also what Google looks for to determine your blog’s relevance to the phrase being searched. So if you want your blog to be relevant to Google when it begins to search for “Dale Carnegie Training”, putting this phrase in the title of your blog is the way to get it into the title tag of your blog and noticed by the search engines..

Now, will this make you immediately pop up on the first page of the search engine results pages? Probably not. There are a number of factors that Google uses to determine relevancy and we’ve only looked at one of those factors. But like I said, it’s a good start.

One more thing. Going back to the Blogger dashboard and looking at the basic section where we modified the blog title. You’ll see two drop down boxes:

These settings essentially allow your blog to be found in the Blogger blog roll and tell the search engines that you want them to index your blog.

If you make these “no”, your current clients can still find your blog because they know your blog address. It’s all of the other people, the ones that don’t know you exist but are searching for “sales training” or “leadership training” who won’t find you because you told the search engines not to consider your blog when the do their indexing.

So, seriously, you want these to be “yes”.

That’s it for now. Stay tuned for additional tips as they become available.

If you want automatic updates, click here and get RSS updates in your reader or you can click here to get updates in your email.

Gmail, Blogger, And Lead Generation Will Be The New Focus Of SalesITTech

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 20:20:00 +0000

It's been a while since I've posted to this blog, yet it continues to draw a crowd of people looking for new ideas on leveraging technology.

Over the last 9 months or so, I've started exploring the WordPress platform and my duties over at Manta and Dale Carnegie have grown. Since that time, I toyed with the idea of just dismantling this blog and using the content elsewhere.

However, there's still a crowd coming in to find simple tips and tactics on how to transfer and use gmail. There continues to be a steady stream of individuals looking to tie their blog to their Linkedin account. And there are quite a few small business people, sales people, and trainers, who have created a blog using the Blogger platform because it's quick, simple and they don't have a lot of time and money to put into anything else. What they do want, however, is a way to generate leads, express their ideas and engage the people that they are coaching.

So I'll continue to post my findings and discoveries here for those small business owners and sales reps looking for ideas on using the communication tools available to us.

Here's to the coming months.

Cheers.

Did You Get Phished By Chase?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 07:14:00 +0000

The holiday season is upon us. And with the usual holiday cheer and shopping rush, we can expect the usual host of… unsavory characters to make attempts at getting access to our online accounts and personal information.

It’s gonna happen so just expect to see it. I know I am.

I expect to see the email from an ebay participant telling me that they are anxious to complete the transaction and get the merchandise in question if I would just take the time and complete the conveniently provided form.

I expect to see the email from the “fake” Paypal company telling me that my account has been compromised and that I need to go to the account setup page to update my password. And they are even kind enough to provide a link to the page for my convenience.

I expect to get he occasional email from some “security professional” from a small bank telling me that my account has been compromised and that I need to use the supplied link to update my security credentials. Never mind the fact that I never heard of the bank let alone opened an account with them.

As the year draws to a close, more people will come under increased pressure between closing business at work and creating a memorable holiday event at home. Consequently, they won’t scrutinize those urgent and ominous looking email messages from “the bank” in their email inbox.

A Social Engineering Lesson From A Counterfeiter

When I was in college, one of the books that made the rounds in our class was an underground classic entitled “The Poor Man’s James Bond”. It was in the same class of books that included “The Anarchist’s Cook Book” so you can make a pretty good guess about some of the content.

I had obtained a copy of a copy of a copy, so you can imagine what the print quality and readability of this dog-eared document was like. Yeah, it was pretty ugly. There was one section, however, that was still in fairly good shape with no dropouts or additional markings, probably because it was the section that the past owners were the least interested in. This was the counterfeiting section.

I don’t remember all of the steps that the author outlined to create a passable counterfeit bill back then. In truth, I found it equally uninteresting and way too much work. However, I do remember the suggestions he made for passing one off.

His suggestion was to take the play money, roll it around in the dirt, and bake it in the oven to give it that well used look and feel. Then take it to a place of business during the busiest time of the day and buy something small with it. On checking out, get in the line manned by the greenest kid you can find with as many irate people as possible to make the purchase.

Now, when the counterfeiter is standing there with their dirty, smelly counterfeit $20 bill and a big smile, all the kid sees is a mile-long line of irate, rude people behind him. In an effort to get everyone out the door with as little drama as possible, the kid won’t put up much of a challenge to the counterfeiter.

I’m happy to say that measures have been implemented that make copying US bills extremely difficult if not impossible. But the social engineering piece is still out there and the phishers are making heavy use of the basic principles.

They are sending you email with official logos and lots of words implying urgency and importance in an effort to get you to react emotionally instead of responding logically.

They will do this at a time when they know you have will have lots of email from other companies making offers. And all of this will occur at a time when you are trying to juggle 7 different things while struggling under time and emotional pressures.

Email Phishing Example

Take this entry for example. Now I know that phishers have used banks in the past, but this is the first time I’ve seen them use bait this big.

As you can see, I’ve received what appears to be an urgent request from Chase asking me to update my security information (let's forget for the moment that I don't have an account with Chase, a dead give away that it's a phishing scam, and proceed with the usual shock and suprise). My guess is that the big oversized logo coupled with phrases like “site authorization”, “security”, and “strongly advise” will stir up some type of visceral response. The additional title of “Chase Security” is probably there to make me pay less attention to the name of the person encouraging me to change my security information. (John Edwards? Wasn’t he running for President of the US?)

They’ve even provided a convenient link for me to sign into my account.

Rolling the mouse of the link will give you the URL in the browser status bar (that bar down below that has the word “Done”). While I don’t have it shown here, the URL turned out to be a shortened URL, probably to hide the final destination. The URL was http//nuurl.us/97061.

Naturally, this thing stinks to high heaven. It has ‘phish’ written all over it. First there is the simple fact that I’ve received this email from a bank. Banks will never send out email regarding security. They may use email for marketing purposes and tell you about some new wonderful services they are about to unleash or some new shops where you can spend your money. But for any type of serious communication you can expect to get something in the USPS or a phone call. You can forget about email. They are wound way to tight for that.

Then there’s the URL, a masked URL that ultimately doesn’t go back to the Chase domain. Of course you can’t see where it goes until you click on it. But the very fact that it’s hidden is a very telling sign.

There are some other unspoken rules here as well. Nothing hard and fast, but it is something that I’ve observed. Banks are large corporations. As such, their IT department typically has a set structure when creating email accounts, and that structure is usually something like firstname.lastname@companydomain.com.

The other unspoken rule is the punctuation. Again, there is no hard and fast rule here on how someone in the banking industry should behave, but when was the last correspondence you got from a banker that had an exclamation point, let alone three? When someone in the financial industry is writing some type of correspondence, they tend to stick with the facts and figures. They leave little room for any emotional involvement. In general, if you get a correspondence from a bank punctuated with exclamation points, chances are it’s not from someone in the financial industry.

Now, clicking on this link results in the following:

So if you have the smartscreen filter turned on in IE8 (or Chrome or Firefox), you will see a screen similar to this. Congratulations! You’ve done your part to thwart the phishers.

However, with the smartscreen filter turned off, we see a page that looks like the following:

I imagine that Chase has a page somewhere that looks like this. The guys who are sending this one out probably just ripped off the template and modified it for their purposes. The phrase, “Chase.com Demo” is a giveaway.

Also look at the URL in the address bar. There is no reference to any legitimate business domain name, which is why the smartscreen filter kicked this thing to the skids.

The other thing here to notice is that this is not a secure connection. Anytime a web connection is transferring secure data, the connection will encrypt the data before it sends it. If the connection is secure, you will see something like the following:

This is for a Google Analytics account. The connection is secured using the https protocol. The quick way to tell if the connection is secure is to look for the “lock” at the top of the browser. If you don’t see the lock at the top and the site is requesting that you pass over secure or sensitive data like passwords or account numbers, it’s time to cut and run.

This site from “Fake Chase” is using the unsecured protocol, it isn’t locked down and it’s asking for secure information, like your User ID, the password to your Chase account, social security number…

And of course, no financial institution would ask you for this kind of information via email, ever. So don’t give it out.

This holiday season while you are out doing the “shop ‘til you drop” thing, remember that there are some unsavory characters who are also out there shopping… for you and your bank account numbers. Don’t let them get yours.

Stay vigilant.

SEO Tip For Bloggers using Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 08:28:00 +0000

Today I discovered one of those Search Engine Optimization challenges that you know about but you don’t realize how it affects you until someone points it out.

In this case, Google pointed it out for me and it involved the blogging platform, Blogger.

Since I started using Blogger, I’ve been using the default font style when I create my posts. Then I would select certain blocks of copy, and sometimes all of it, and change the font style from the default Times Roman or Trebuchet, to Arial.

So imagine my surprise when, after looking at the Google Webmaster tools, it indicated that two of my major SEO keywords were “span” and “family”.

In looking at the code in the “Edit HTML” window, I saw a new “span” tag for every paragraph with text that I changed to a different font family.

Clearly, when considering Search Engine Optimization, the better way to change the overall font family for the body of the post is through the CSS.

With Blogger, the best way to do this is through the “Fonts and Colors” menu under the “Layout” tab. From there you can control a variety of variables like the “Page Background Color”, the “Blog Title Font” and “Post Text Font” to name a few.

And the modifications won’t interfere with your SEO efforts.

By using the “Fonts and Colors” menu under the “layout” tab, Google’s webmaster tools won’t show that your main SEO keywords are words that are actually a part of your site infrastructure. Then your Search Engine Optimization efforts can really make an impact.

Of course, if you are using one of the customized templates, you may have to modify the HTML before the Blogger platform will have access to the appropriate CSS variables. Just one more thing to be aware of.

Twitter Application Hootsuite Is Now A Social Network Communication Hub

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:14:00 +0000

Hootsuite Updated To Interface With LinkedIn And Facebook

Last night, I noticed that the 3rd party professional Twitter application Hootsuite went offline for maintenance. I really didn’t think much of it initially. Services like this go offline occasionally for routine maintenance and upgrades. But after 6 hours of not being able to connect to it, I knew something big was in the works.

Over the past few weeks, Twitter has made some major additions, one of them being the addition of lists. Professional Twitter desktop applications like Tweetdeck, and Seesmic recently made modifications to accommodate these updates, everything from the new way Twitter handles retweets to connecting with other social networks like Linkedin.

When Hootsuite came back online this morning, there were plenty of changes integrated into its structure. Now, not only does Hootsuite manages and organizes your Twitter lists, but it also interfaces to your Linkedin and Facebook accounts. This opens a host of possibilities which I’m sure we’ll explore in the coming weeks.

I’m sure that there were some other changes and upgrades integrated into Hootsuite to make it more stable and increase its flexibility. And I’m also fairly sure that there will be a few… surprises that we’ll stumble across as we move forward—you can’t make a major upgrade like this without a few oversights. But, these latest upgrades, coupled with some of the other features that were already integrated into the application, turns Hootsuite into a powerful social network communication platform.

You can find more descriptions of the Hootsuite upgrades on their blog here.

Free Social Media Icons For Your Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 05:49:00 +0000

In a past post, I demonstrated how to acquire a badge from Linkedin and install the HTML code in your Blogger blog.

A number of you out there made good of that code and put it to immediate use.

Here’s what you need to know.

Facebook also offers a badge.

Plaxo offers a badge as well.

And Twitter gives you the opportunity to create a window into your tweets right on your blog.

The downside for some of these badges is that they take up a lot of real estate on your blog.

In perusing some of the other blogs out there and getting some insight from my friend Lewis Howes, I discovered a way to shorten down the badges into a few well recognized icons that will still allow your followers to follow you on your favorite social network.

For an example of what I’m talking about, see the sidebar on the right hand side with my social network connections on Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter. I’m still working on YouTube.

Before we talk about putting the connections into your Blogger blog, you will need to collect the social media icons. You can find these icons at a site called Iconspedia. These icons are subject to the creative commons license. While you can use them free of charge, don't alter the image as the logos belong to the respective companies. Still, for promoting your own personal brand and expanding your social networks, they can't be beat.

When you pull up the site, you’ll notice a bunch of different icon classes. The ones that we will use are the social media icons. You can find them by going to the catalog on the left-hand side and locating the “Internet Icons”. When clicked, it will expand to show your options. Click on the entry entitled “Popular” and then you will see a bunch of selections in the middle window pane.

The ones that we’ll use in the next blog post are in the “Social me” entry. Of course there are a number of other interesting entries and you can get innovative when creating the look and feel of your blog. What we will discuss can be transferred to any of the other icons.

But for now, hit the download button and you will begin downloading a zip file with all of the icons listed. For the “Social me” pack, that would be thirty, including icons for Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Be sure to place the zip file in a location where you will have easy access, and after it has finished downloading, go to the file location, double click the file and unpack the icons out of the zip file. This should be fairly straight forward, but if you have trouble, leave a message below and let me know.

You will end up with four variations of every icon: one file will be an ICO file type, and the other three will be of file type PNG in three different sizes, 32 pixels, 48 pixels, and 64 pixels wide.

The ones I’m using on the right side bar are 32 pixels wide.

Once you have these icons extracted, come back for the next post when we’ll look at how to put these into your Blogger blog with the appropriate social network.

Good Selling.

Third Linkedin Event Rocks Cleveland

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Linkedin Networking Event In Northeast Ohio Is The Biggest Yet

Unless you live way out west and the biggest Ohio city east of you is Toledo, then you probably attended the largest LinkedIn Networking events in Northeast Ohio.

That’s right. Lewis Howes has done it again. The Cleveland Linkedin Networking Event at the Rock Bottom Café was the largest yet. Over 700 people registered with over 250 people stating that they wanted to attend but had other engagements.

Of course, the place didn’t seem as packed this time.

For starters, the food was placed upstairs which encouraged more people to explore their inner adventurer and migrate to the second floor where all of the fun was staged.

The other addition to this gathering was the Speed Networking event that Lewis put together.

Like Speed Dating, this exercise involved getting 50 people together and having them sit across from each other in a line of tables. And for a pre-selected amount of time, each pair had the opportunity to introduce themselves to each other and make a favorable impression while asking questions of their partners.

And when the bell went off, individuals got up and “slid to the right” to engage their next new partner.

I guess when you are in these kinds of situation, much like you are when you are in sales, you have to know the kind of questions to ask and the outcomes you are trying to achieve.

You didn’t have to pay extra for this event, nor was there a lottery. The selection process was very simple – the first fifty attendees got to participate.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it to the location in time for the Speed Networking. I was engaged in creating one of the rather unique door prizes for the event so I didn’t arrive there until 6:30. I think the next time we put together promotional door prizes, we’ll get someone whose knowledge of basketball is not limited to Cheech and Chong’s “Basketball Jones” and their vocabulary extends beyond Cavaliers, Bulls, Lakers and Celtics.

I didn’t see Barry from RippleResults, but photographer Robert Schleimer from Erie Shore Photography was there. And unfortunately, no one was interested in getting a headshot for the LinkedIn profile.

I think the majority of people where there to socialize and take in an adult beverage or two. But, if Bob shows up again, I’m gonna bring my hat and get a more interesting headshot taken for my profile.

The next LinkedIn Event will most likely be held in Columbus, but it will be after the CONES event on September 17.

Keep your eyes open, your ears to the ground, and keep monitoring the LinkedWorking groups for Cleveland and for Columbus.

Good Selling!

And now for some fun!

Lewis Howes at the entry table signing in guests at the Linkedin event.

The activity on the first floor was fast and furious.

However, the second floor is where a lot of the new action was happening - such as the 50 person Speed Networking session.

Not to mention the fantastic spread that was available.

And as usual, Lewis was moving about the crowd making sure events proceeded as smoothly as possible.

If you stayed on the first floor this time, you missed out on some major action. The next time this event is in Cleveland, be sure to unlease your inner explorer and wander around a bit.

Here's Sheryl Berman, an event planner who wants to get back into nonprofit and Zolt Seregi from Onelink Technical Services. When people make connections, the effect is obvious and the results are outstanding.

Here we have Michael Smercina, a mechanical engineer and recent grad specializing in metallurgy, and Andrea Jakubowycz, an active distributor of PartyLite. Both are looking oh so serious...

...But after unleashing their passion...

...They look like they have taken Jonathan Crane's advice to Batman and have lightened up. Networking events can be fun when the pressure is off and we can truly connect with people.

Drew Grdina, Patty Quinonez, Daniel Ramos and Mark Klanac exchanging contact information and professional history. In fact, I discovered that Drew Grdina, the only guy in the picture with a tie, was a former Dale Carnegie Sales Advantage graduate and Instructor before striking off to create Crestwood Management LLC.

Have an interesting experience in any one of the Ohio LinkedIn Events?

Leave a comment below and share the wealth.

Linkedin Networking Event in Cleveland is Tonight

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:31:00 +0000

Cleveland Linkedin Networking Event Tonight Will Include Speed Networking

OK gang. It looks like the Cleveland Linkedin event is a go with a hefty 650+ people scheduled to attend to do some serious networking.

In order to accommodate those serious networkers, Lewis Howes, master Linkedin Consultant and creator of the event plans on holding a speed networking event upstairs for the first 50 people in the door.

I have it on good authority that there will be some really cool door prizes drawn as well.

Remember that the Premier Cleveland Linkedin Networking event takes place today at 5:30 PM at the Rock Bottom Cafe in The Flats. Get there early, grab your spot in the speed networking session and prepare to network you brains out.

The Rock Bottom Cafe 2000 Sycamore St. Cleveland, OH

See you at the party!

Open Multiple Yahoo Accounts In IE8

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 04:26:00 +0000

Gaining Access To Multiple Yahoo Accounts Using IE8

OK. I logged into my second Yahoo email account recently. I typically login to my catchall account everyday to look at the spam, check email marketing samples, and look for anything of value that may find it’s way into the account. But I login to my “technical” account about once or twice a month.

For the longest time, if you had multiple Yahoo email accounts, you had to log out of the one that you had opened on your machine because Yahoo only allowed access to one email account per machine.

So before I could open a browser window and log into my Yahoo email tech account, I had to log out of my Yahoo catchall account, even if I had the “stay logged in” box unchecked.

Well, I made a mistake two days ago. I was on my laptop logged into my Yahoo email catchall account in IE8 and I opened a second IE8 window and opened the Yahoo site. To my amazement, it didn’t come up with my catchall account logged in.

Out of curiosity, I signed in to my Yahoo email technical account and it allowed me to do that. Furthermore, I was still logged in on my Yahoo email catchall account in the first IE8 browser.

What happened?

I mean, for the longest time, when IE7 was in full bloom and IE8 was nothing more than a sparkle in an engineer’s mind, I could only login to one Yahoo account per machine. Which meant that while I could open up multiple browsers and login to multiple Google accounts simultaneously, Yahoo only allowed me to login to one account on one machine regardless of the number of IE7 sessions I opened.

Now, my Yahoo accounts were behaving almost like my Gmail accounts.

First, I thought it was the new IE8 browser configuration that accounted for the change.

But that didn’t wash. I had another machine still running IE7 and I saw the same behavior on both configurations with Yahoo email accounts.

Then I thought that maybe it was because I also had Firefox and Chrome loaded on my test rig.

But that didn’t make sense either because I had no other browsers on my machine that was running IE7. My Yahoo email accounts still behaved like my Gmail accounts on both machines.

Eventually, I determined that regardless if I was running IE7, IE8, Firefox, or Chrome in combination with Windows XP, Windows Vista Ultimate or Vista Business, Yahoo mail was now behaving more like Google Gmail.

After much brain wracking and gnashing of teeth, I came to the conclusion that it was nothing that I had done. It was something that the good people at Yahoo had done.

Was it a result of the new portal look?

Did it happen after they killed off their personal blog and briefcase services?

Or maybe the team up with Microsoft had something to do with it.

I’m still waiting to hear something from the Yahoo team.

For now, know that if you configure your IE8 browser using the “nomerge” flag, your machine will handle multiple Yahoo email accounts the same way that if handles multiple Gmail email accounts.

Cleveland Linkedin Networking Event

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 02:53:00 +0000

Tuesday August 25, 2009.

Mark the date, update your LinkedIn profile, and be prepared to network your brains out at the Cleveland Linkedin Networking Event.

Once again, master Linkedin consultant Lewis Howes, is conducting the high powered networking event giving Cleveland business people an opportunity to connect with other like-minded individuals, share contacts and generate some new ideas. And there may even be some neat door prizes as well.

Lewis has been holding these events about every two months since the beginning of the year. And at the end of August, it will be time for the next one. Hold onto your hats because this one looks to be even bigger than the last one. The Linkedin registration currently has 451 Clevelanders signed on as attending with over 100 more listed as interested.

And we still have 18 days to go!

The Cleveland LinkedIn event will be held at the Rock Bottom Café down in The Flats as it has been over the past few months. You have to admit that the place is conveniently located allowing residents on both sides of the river equal access.

Over the past few days, I’ve noticed some grumbling amongst the ranks that the venue is too small to hold the growing number of people that are interested in expanding their network. Hey, a turnout of 450 attendees is pretty big, especially when you are talking about “one tiny little restaurant”. However, in all of the times that I’ve been to these events, I’ve seen the upstairs area totally barren with the exception of 2 or 3 lost souls either wandering around looking for people to talk to, or just taking a break from all of the excitement.

Wait a minute… You mean there’s an upstairs to the restaurant?

Yes, there is space upstairs. And it’s a very spacious upstairs complete with a bar, a couple of pool tables, some couches… it actually looked like a good place to get away and conduct some business.

Although this time around, I think Lewis has something else in store for the area.

In order to bring out more of the explorer in all of us, Lewis will host a “Speed Networking” session upstairs. This will get people exploring more of the place while they are introducing themselves to new people in other industries. There will be a limit to how many people can participate in this event and we’ll find out the details in due time. Subscribe to my post updates in your favorite newsreader to find out more about the Speed Networking addition to the Cleveland LinkedIn event.

Also, if you happen to be in the Columbus area on August 20, you may want to take advantage of a half-day seminar that Lewis will be conducting with Barry Chandler. Entitled, “Leveraging Social Media, Email And Your Website To Grow Your Leads, Add Customers, and Build Trust”, it going to address everything from social media networks to a coherent web strategy.

As I said, this seminar will be in Columbus on August 20, 2009 and there will be a nominal charge to attend the session. You can find the details here at rippleresults.com

Remember, subscribe to post updates and I’ll keep you informed when the Speed Networking details come out.

In the interim, register for the biggest Cleveland LinkedIn Networking Event here and get your shiny new business cards printed up. I think you’re gonna need a lot of them for this event!

Good Selling!

Open Multiple Gmail Accounts With IE8

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:15:00 +0000

Accessing Multiple Gmail Accounts Using IE8

In a previous post, we saw how to open multiple gmail accounts with IE8. And we saw that all of the action was contained in the menu bar under “file”->”new session”.

There is another way to achieve the same result using IE8 but it takes a little more configuration setup. However, once it’s set up, you won’t have to remember to start a new IE8 session again. This can be a real boon if you are in sales or you are a consultant and you juggle several accounts throughout the day.

Say, for example you are just starting up a small SEO consultancy in addition to your “day job” and you are monitoring two or three of your clients using Google Analytics. Google Analytics is just one of the Google applications that you can access once you login to your Google account, which includes your Gmail account. So for clientA, you can have clientA[at]gmail.com, clientB tied to clientB[at]gmail.com, and clientC tied to clientC[at]gmail.com and a separate Google Analytics account tied to each one.

It’s possible to use one Analytics account to monitor all three, but that can cause problems if you decide to give one of your clients a peek at their results or if you want to teach them how to access their results on their own.

Anyway, logging out and logging in to each account can be time consuming affair. What you really want is to be able to pull up 3 different browsers and be able to switch between multiple accounts with only a click of the mouse. You want easy access to all of these accounts simultaneously from the same machine.

And you want to access all of the apps for all of these accounts very quickly.

As we mentioned before, you can open fresh sessions of IE8 from the menu bar allowing you to open multiple gmail accounts and the associated family of Google applications.

However, there is a faster way to do this using a one-time configuration setup of IE8. Check it out.

How To Setup IE8 for Accessing Multiple Gmail Accounts

Step 1: open the folder c:\Program Files\Internet Explorer. Right click the executable “Internet Explorer” and click the “Copy” function:

Step 2: Go to your desktop, right click the open area and create a shortcut by hitting “Paste Shortcut”:

Step 3: Once you have the IE8 shortcut on your desktop, right click the shortcut and select “properties”:

Step 4: The “Properties” window will come up detailing specifics about the shortcut including the target application, where it lives and other details. What we care about is the field “Target” right at the top.

What we are going to do is add a software switch to this command. Click on the command in this field, put your cursor all the way over at the end of the command after the double quote at the end of the command and type a space followed by “-nomerge” :

Once you have that in place, hit the OK button and you are good to go.

In this next shot, I’ve opened up an IE8 browser window and have logged in as the EPW Test Dude.

Before adding the switch, hitting the shortcut would open another browser and sign in as the EPW Test Dude. Now that the shortcut runs the command with the “-nomerge” switch, it brings up a new IE8 browser window without sharing the session cookies. I am free to sign in to another Gmail account:

By the way, you can also set this up in your “Quick Launch” toolbar.

Setting up IE8 in the Quick Launch Toolbar

Run down to the taskbar at the bottom of the screen right click the taskbar, select toolbars and then select “Quick Launch”:

The menu item "Quick Launch" will either be checked or unchecked. If it is not checked, taking this action will turn it on. Once you selected it and turned it on, you will notice a whole new section of the toolbar available to you. The items that you have in the “Quick Launch” will determine what your "Quick Launch" toolbar will look like.

Right click in a clean area in the “Quick Launch” section and select “Open Folder”:

This will open the folder that holds all of the application shortcuts that you want to open with a single click. Simply right click the IE8 shortcut that you placed on your desktop earlier, copy it, and then right click anyplace in this folder and select “Paste Shortcut” to create a shortcut in this folder:

Then follow the procedure outlined earlier to insure that the “-nomerge” switch is set for this shortcut as well, apply it and close out the folder. When you are finished, you will find an Internet Explorer icon in your “Quick Launch” section that will bring up a new IE8 browser window. And it won’t share the session cookies with a previous session:

Of course, if you are still using IE7, then you won’t have to go through this process. Merely kicking off another IE7 browser window will require you to login in to your gmail account regardless of previous sessions.

Next, we’ll take a look at doing the same with Firefox.

Meanwhile, Good Selling!

Set Gmail Labels Using Filters To Clear Your Inbox And Save Time

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 18:24:00 +0000

Organize Messages In Gmail With Labels

One of the tasks I get to do during the day is to monitor our chat application. We use Provide Support here and I’ll post some ideas on how you can better leverage the tool later. But for now, realize that the application generates a ton of email.

Every time that little box pops up, a session is initiated. And when the session ends, an email transcript is generated. These transcripts have to be reviewed to insure that there are no technical issues, that people are being followed up on, that they are getting what they want, and sometimes just to see what the best ways are to communicate with the good people visiting our sites.

Constant and never ending improvement, right?

Still, my Gmail inbox is flooded with hundreds of messages making it hard for me to find what I need at times and it definitely slows things down.

I’m sure no one else out there has experienced this problem.

If you are using Gmail, you’ll also know that Google’s mail facility is structured a little differently from other email systems, like Lotus Notes. A system like Lotus Notes uses a series of folders to hold messages, a structure much like the folder system in MS Windows. You can drag and drop messages to the appropriate folder and clean up your inbox allowing you to focus on the really urgent and important stuff.

Gmail, on the other hand, uses labels to mark messages, making it possible to classify a single message with multiple descriptors and appear under many different grouping, something that isn’t possible in Lotus Notes. However, dragging and dropping of messages is not an option, which has the potential for leaving our Gmail “Inbox” extremely cluttered with stuff we’d rather put into another folder for reviewing later.

Why can’t we just move all of those messages into their own folder like we can do with Lotus Notes?

Well, we can, sort of.

As I mentioned, Gmail uses labels and filters to give you the view you want of your messages when you want it. I mentioned this before briefly, but here is a quick overview.

Gmail Labels vs. Lotus Notes Folders

Instead of all messages coming in and getting dumped into your inbox folder like Lotus Notes or Yahoo Mail, all incoming messages in Gmail get tagged with a default label and placed into a big generic message pool or message database. In most cases, this default label is “Inbox”, but sometimes, if the Gmail spam filters decides that the incoming message is actually something more nefarious, it will label the message with the “Spam” label.

So when I log in and look at my “Inbox”, I’m actually looking at my entire Gmail message database through a filter that shows only those messages with the label “Inbox”.

If I switch it up and click “Spam” along the sidebar, then Gmail will show me the entire message database through the filter that only shows messages with the label “Spam”.

And if I want to keep a message but I don’t want it to come up in my “Inbox” view, then by hitting the “Archive” button when that message is selected will strip the “Inbox” label off and stop it from showing up when I use the “Inbox” filter. The message, however, is still available and can be seen by hitting the “All Mail” link.

Organize Your Messaging And Sales Activity For Maximum Effectiveness

So what does this mean if you’re in sales and you’re using Gmail, or running Google Apps?

Well, if you are like many of the other sales reps I’ve talked with, you are probably experiencing a lot of angst resulting from all of your incoming messages getting dumped into your “Inbox”.

You are probably frustrated because you can’t drag and drop any of those messages from your inbox folder to a new and appropriately entitled folder to classify your email.

And you are probably exasperated with sorting through a bunch of messages that are necessary but at the moment are only adding to your confusion and disorganization.

What you really want is to have some of some of these incoming messages marked with the appropriate label and NOT have them show up in your “Inbox”. And you don’t want to spend time going through your mail manually selecting messages to label them individually.

After all, in sales, we have to be able to manage our time and our resources as quickly as possible – right?

Well, there IS a way to make this happen in Gmail.

Check it out.

Setting Up Gmail Filters To Automatically Label And Categorize Your Incoming Messages

Here we see my favorite test subject, the EPW Test Dude, back in action:

The EPW Test Dude is still getting a fair amount of exotic spam emails. Fortunately, Google deletes messages over 30 days old. In the above screenshot, what’s left of the spam has been moved to the “Inbox”. The number in parenthesis indicates how many unread messages we have in the inbox, in this case, 14 messages are left unread.

Let’s see what kind of damage we can cause.

In the next screenshot, we have selected the first 5 message and by hitting the “Labels” button, we can assign one of our labels to the selected messages. In this example, we will label the selected messages with the “Columbus” label.

As you can see, the five messages that were selected now have the “Columbus” label tied to them. In this screen shot, we are looking at all of the messages, so we also see all of the messages that have the “Inbox” label attached to them as well.

Let’s see what we can do. Hit the “Settings” link at the top of the page and go to the “Settings” page:

Then click the “Filters” tab and let’s create a filter:

Go ahead and hit “Create a New Filter”:

In this next screen shot, we can identify the elements that will determine which emails will be selected. You can identify elements from the “From:” field in the incoming message, like specific people who send you messages, or the “To:” field, the intended recipient of the message. You can also pick the “Subject:” field if there is something in there that you want to trigger on, say, for example, any incoming messages that have Gmail in the subject line.

You can also set up the filter to search for certain words or if it lacks certain words in the body or even if it has attachments. For our purpose, we will search for all messages coming from our buddy, the voicemailcoach:

The shot of the next screen is where we begin to take control. We already know how to identify specific messages. Now we can select the action to take on those messages. In this instance, we will apply the label “Columbus” to all of these messages. In addition, however, we hit the first check box that is entitled, “Skip the Inbox (Archive it)” and this will stop Gmail from putting the label “Inbox” on all incoming messages.

We can also hit the small checkbox that indicates that we want to perform this action on all messages that are currently in the account. In our example, we have no other messages from the voicemailcoach so it doesn’t really affect us.

Once all of the actions have been selected, hit the “create filter” button and you are off to the races.

In this shot, we see the usual “Inbox” view. We see that there are 14 messages and we see that the first 5 also have the “Columbus” label attached to them. Off in the left-hand column, we also see the total number of messages associated with our “Columbus” label – again 5 messages.

This screen shot looks almost the same as the previous one except for one minor difference. If you look back at the “Columbus” label, you’ll see that there are now 6 unread messages in it. Yet, the “Inbox” view has not changed. There are still 14 unread messages total and 5 of them have the “Columbus” label. What gives?

Hitting the “Columbus” label link provides us with an inside view of what’s been label with “Columbus”. We see that the voicemailcoach has sent us a message and it appears in our “Columbus” view, but it didn’t show up in the inbox. Also notice the labels here. Five of the messages are labeled with “Columbus” as well as “Inbox”. The message from the voicemailcoach, however, has only the “Columbus” label and not the “Inbox” label, which explains why we did not see it in our Inbox view.

So, by “Archiving” our incoming messages, we can effectively remove them from our “inbox” view. And with the proper application of filters to label all incoming messages, you can rest assured that all of your incoming messages will be placed where you need them saving you a whole lot of time and frustration.

Linkedin Invitations – Tip For Increasing Your Connections

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 02:36:00 +0000

Expanding Your Linkedin Network

Here’s a LinkedIn tip that you can use to increase your LinkedIn network and your circle of influence.
A few days ago, I received a LinkedIn connection invitation from someone that I didn’t know.
In the past, I typically ignored these kinds of invitations. But after reading Lewis Howes and Frank Agin’s book, LinkedWorking, I have since modified my strategy when building my Linkedin network.

Read the rest of this post at its new location www.larryprevost.com

Optimizing Blogger Titles For Keywords – Quick Tip For Increasing Your Blog’s Exposure

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:46:00 +0000

I came across this little tidbit while doing some other searches on the web concerning lead generation and cold calling.

If you are a sales person, an affiliate marketer or a job seeker, then you probably want to have your blog posts pop up on Google for certain keywords so prospects can take notice of your expertise.

Here are the variables of concern when you are using Google’s publishing tool, Blogger:

Blogger uses the title of your post to create the page file name (the piece of the URL that is right that is between the “/” and the “.html”).
When creating the page file name, Blogger limits the name to the first 39 characters.
After you save the page out with the first page name, you can change the page title to something more catchy to grab people’s attention but it won’t change the page file name.
Search engines look for keywords in the post title, the domain name and the page name, so when you first create your Blogger post, you need to have your keywords within the first 39 characters.
Search engines also determine keyword relevancy by their location in the page title. So you also need to keep your keywords really close to the front of the page title in order to have high relevancy.

So what you find yourself confronted with is a sales engineering problem.

On the one hand, you can write up a page title with all of your keywords within the first 39 characters. The result will be a page name and a page title that will rank very high for your keywords. However, it will look really ugly to people and your audience will probably be more enticed to click on your competitors’ items instead of clicking your entry. And the title broadcasted in your feeds will not induce people to click and read your post either. So what good does it do to get top billing for your keywords if no one wants to click on your post?

On the other hand, you can write a title that looks really enticing to your reader base and makes them drool with anticipation when they see it. However, such language tends to induce a sense of mystery or incite a sense of shock and awe. Such language needs a little more freedom in word placement. The result is that some of your keywords may be placed beyond of the 39-character limit. Net result, your feeds will look enticing, but your organic placement will stink.

So you see the engineering dilemma. You can have very high placement with a title that doesn’t excite your audience very much, or you can have a title that makes your audience drool with excitement if they are willing to skip over to the 10th page of the search engine results.

So needless to say, when you create your Blogger post pages, you will have a little bit of work in front of you.

Here is another challenge. In Blogger, the title for all of your blog posts is preceded by the blog title!

Take a look at this:

This is a test blog I created on Blogger with the title, “The Business of Job Searches”. Notice up on the title bar of the browser is the title of the page. This is typically the same text that’s in the HTML title tag. It's also what the search engines like Google are looking for when determining search relevance.

Notice what happens when I click on a post.

If my keyword is leadership, I should have good organic search results. The word “leadership” is first in my title putting it within the 39 character limit for Blogger page names and way up front in the title. However, notice what is on the browser title bar, “The Business of Job Searches: Leadership Principles in Dale Carnegie Training”

In order to have 100% relevancy as far as the title is concerned, my keywords must appear as the first word of the title. Relevancy will drop to below 60% for keywords that have fallen to the 4th position or further. So the further along in the title a word is located, the less relevant Google considers it. If what I see in the browswer title bar is what’s in my HTML title tag, then I’m in trouble. The relevancy for my keyword, leadership, is going to be below 60%. And it’s all because Blogger places the blog title first before the page title where all of my keywords are located.

I guess there’s some wisdom to having short blog titles.

Turns out that there is a way around this. But you’ll have to do some editing of the HTML that makes up the framework of your blog.

First, get to your Blogger dashboard. As you can see here, I’m back as the ‘EPW Test Dude’ with my blog I created back a few posts ago. Look, it even has 5 posts.

Go to the Layout section:

And then to the ‘Edit HTML’ section

Now you’ll see some pretty ugly stuff. Don’t wig out. The piece that you want to edit is right there in front of you. You don’t have to scroll down or do any kind of search. The piece you want is the following:

This is the piece that essentially writes the blog page title right there in the HTML title tag and puts the title in the title bar of your browser.

What you want to replace that piece of code with is the following code:

<b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == “index”’>
<title><data:blog.title/></title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> | <data:blog.title/></title>
</b:if>

What this piece of code essentially says is, “if the index page is pulled up, also known as the home page or the first page of your Blogger blog, then go ahead and use the blog title in the title of the page and inside the HTML title tags. Otherwise, put the blog post title down first, followed with a "vertical bar" and then with the blog title, stuff all of that inside the HTML title tags and use it as the title of the page.

The result looks like this:

Save the template out by hitting the “Save Template” button below the edit box

Now, when you go look your post, you will see a slight change:

Notice that the blog post title is now first in the title and “Leadership” is now the first word in the title as well as in the page name.

It will take about a week for the results to make their way into the search engines, depending on how often you post and your current traffic. Of course, to increase it relevancy, we’ll have to add some text into the body of the post that has the word leadership. To make it really relevant, we’ll have to add some surrounding text that actually discusses leadership in a way that people find interesting. But for now, celebrate the fact that you now have some power over what’s getting placed in the title tags of your Blogger blog and possibly increasing your organic search results.

Kudos to the guys at Eblog Templates for finding this snippet of code and making it available -- and I’m sure that there are other, more exotic entries out there. I'll let you know as I find them. And I'll keep you updated on what kinds of changes I see in my search results.

Linkedin Networking Event In Cleveland Is Another Box Office Smash Hit

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:37:00 +0000

This summer is proving to be the season of movie “reboots” (think Star Trek and Terminator Salvation), prequels (again, Terminator Salvation, sort of, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine), and sequels (Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, and Angels and Demons).

On average, sequels typically don’t fare as well as the originals unless you happen to be a superstar director -- oh, like Sam Raimi (Spiderman 2) or Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight) or maybe Lewis Howes (LinkedIn Networking Cleveland Part 2).

Last week Lewis hosted his second LinkedIn Networking event, AKA LinkedWorking, for the Cleveland area this past Wednesday and in the Columbus area the week before. Obviously the magic and the momentum is a long way from wearing off because both events drew even bigger audiences than the “originals”.

Lewis went a little further this time around. In addition to putting on the general evening networking sessions, he hosted morning workshops centered on some aspect of using social networking, like Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter, in your marketing and sales effort.

For example, he teamed up with social marketing guru and Cleveland marketing monster Jim Kukral, The BizWebCoach (TheBizWebCoach.com), to put on a two-hour training program addressing how to increase business profits through social media and online marketing.

That event was originally set up for 40 people and sold out well before the scheduled date. So they added 10 more seats 3 days before the event.

And it sold out again!

People are curious and they want to know how to leverage the power of social media in their business. They want to know how to build online communities of interested buyers and networks of raving fans.

Here’s a movie trailer (38 minutes run time) regarding “Web Success Now!” that Jim and Lewis put on after the workshop but before the LinkedIn networking event. No wild car chases or buildings blowing up, but they do offer some ideas on how to make your business explode with results:

I didn’t get an opportunity to visit the Linkedin event in Columbus this go around, but I did arrive at the Cleveland event early this time and managed to snag a few moments with Jim Kukral. As you can tell from the video, Kukral looks like a former pro football player, but he is a very affable and easygoing guy who is extremely passionate about web based marketing. In our conversation, he stated that his business vision is helping people like you and me realize ours. Kukral has made the slides from his Social Media Bootcamp available on LinkedIn and they can be seen here.

If you like what you see, give Jim a call or send him an email. Or better yet, try following the advice outlined in the slideshow presentation and get started doing something right now.

And Lewis was still playing the Rock Star LinkedIn emcee, auctioning off door prizes from local event sponsors, walking about greeting people and making sure everyone was having a good time.

He also has a new gig with Barry Chandler called RippleResults (rippleresults.com) heading our way soon.

There is one interesting thing about their card. Barry and Lewis have placed easy to identify icons on their cards for numerous ways to contact them. There is a phone icon for a phone, a car icon for brick and mortar address and a traditional mail envelope for email.

And there is a small blue bird for connecting via twitter.

What’s missing? The traditional fax line.

Is this a sign of the way marketing is going? Is fax usage on the downslide as we move to transferring docs by email, collaborative spaces like Google Apps and chat downloads? I think we’ll know in another year or so.

By the way, if you haven’t taken a look at Lewis’ book, LinkedWorking, I would highly encourage you grab yourself a copy and give it a read.

I think of the book like this: If you want to know how to use a Polycom VoIP phone, you grab a Polycom manual and you’re good to go. However, if you want to know how to use a Polycom VoIP phone to generate sales, you grab some time with a sales person who knows how to use the phone to generate sales.

This book is like that sales person. It’s not going to detail how to create a LinkedIn signature file or how to put a LinkedIn button on your blog. It will, however, give you direction in constructing your LinkedIn network, expanding your presence and building your online brand. I find it an excellent resource to have on hand when I need ideas on making connections. Get it here at LinkedWorking.com.

In spite of the size of this event, I did notice that there were hundreds of respondents on LinkedIn who couldn’t make this event due to scheduling conflicts. But, they said that they are looking forward to the next one, which should happen in the August or September timeframe.

So keep your eyes open and ears to the ground in anticipation of LinkedWorking Part 3… in 3D!

Jim Kukral and Lewis Howes at the Cleveland LinkedIn Networking Event

James Betts from Server Technology and Kaija Bruveris (public LinkedIn Profile) of AXA Advisors making the rounds and connecting with people.

Lewis Howes with Barry Chandler showing off their latest gig, RippleResults.

Lisa Ryan of asklisaryan.com and Bob Perkoski of LocalAdLink making the most of offline social networking at the event.

Luke Ulrych of Progressive posing with the Rock Bottom Staff.

Jim Kukral, The BizWebCoach, offering consultations for scores of people.

Hundreds of people converge on the Rock Bottom Restaurant and Brewery in The Flats just west of downtown Cleveland, to find new business contacts and make new friends.

3 Cold Calling Tips To Burn Up Your Phone Sales

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 17:39:00 +0000

I spend my days in the office working on machines, websites, blogs, reviewing instructor material, running point on new marketing programs, and making sales cold calls. As this is all done in a call center, I get to try a lot of different things and I get to hear a lot from both sides of the phone.

And some of the things that I’ve heard have been simply amazing.

I often get cold calls and voicemail messages from people following up with me after I’ve downloaded a whitepaper. And after hearing their “cold calling script” or listening to their voicemail message, I ask myself, “Did they really want to use those words?” Did they really decide what kind of experience that I, the recipient, was going to have when they left that particular voicemail? Or were they simply running through their script to hit a call quote and they just didn’t care?
Words have power and their arrangement can help shape an audience’s thought processes.
After spending time on the phones, leaving voicemails, making cold calls and overhearing how other sales people conduct the sales process over the phone, I’ve made some observations regarding the words that they use and I’ve seen the results first hand.
So if you want to heat up your cold calls and leave effective voicemails, here are 3 words and phrases to avoid!
When Making Cold Calls, Remember That It's More Than “Just” A Little Thing
In the movie “The Dark Knight” when the Joker makes his grand entrance into Bruce Wayne’s penthouse and crashes the party, he walks around the room brandishing his shotgun and says:
“You know where Harvey is? You know who he is? You know where I can find Harvey? I need to talk to him about something. Just something, a little… No!”
And I often thought, “Why didn’t anyone tell him? After all, it was just a little thing that he had to see Dent about. Probably something minor.”
[By the way, the gentleman who said, “We aren’t intimidated by thugs!”, the gentleman who reminded the Joker of his father, was Senator Patrick Leahy D-VT making his screen debut!]
It occurred to me that the word "just" somehow manages to sneak into almost every conversation that we conduct. The problem with the word “just” is that it minimizes whatever it’s operating on at the time.
Think about the last cold call that you made or voicemail that you left. When you made that call to prospect Bob after he downloaded that whitepaper, what did you say? “Hi Bob. I’m just calling about the whitepaper that you downloaded.” Or “Hi Bob. I’m just following up on our last email correspondence.”
What you are essentially saying is that you called Bob about an unimportant issue. It’s nothing of any significance.
Typically, when we make cold calls like this, we don’t want to stress out prospect Bob or get him worried when he has 27 other things on his schedule. So we use the word “just” to essentially minimize the impact or our message, making our cold call or voicemail insignificant to everything else that Bob has going on at that point in time.
Will that encourage him to take the call? It might. After all, it is just a little thing.
Will it encourage him to take action on the call or to take you as a serious player? Probably not.
And if you are using the word “just” in your voicemails, you can forget about getting a return call. By using the word “just”, you told prospect Bob that the topic of concern is not worth his time to call you back.
In most cases, using the word “just” has become a habit that we fall back on when we are unsure of where we stand with our prospect. And when we are in unfamiliar territory, we attempt to minimize the impact of our presence and our message as much as possible. “Hi. Don’t fear. It’s just me. I’m not as big as the problems that you currently have so I won’t take up much mental space or too much of your time. In fact, my message is so small in relation to what you have going on, you won’t even know I’m here.”
Now really -- is that the message you want to give your prospects?
As a sales person making cold calls and leaving voicemails, you are calling your prospect with earth shattering information that can have a significant impact on their business. Why else would you even think of call them? You are offering something that stands to significantly affect their business processes.
Build your business case. There is no need to justify it.
Take out the word “just”.
I Would Like To Not Need Permission To Be An Effective Sales Person
At 7:00 AM on Friday mornings in Sunnyvale CA, you can visit a Toastmasters group that caters to managers, sales reps, small business owners and entrepreneurs.
This group of individuals can be ruthless at times. And it was at this club that I learned of the debilitating effect of the phrase “I would like to”.
The first time I stood in front of this group to speak and uttered this phrase, at least 4 of the members shouted out, “Well, just go ahead and do it. Stop wasting our time with wishes.”
This is one of those phrases that puts you in a position of asking for permission from your audience before you begin doing whatever it is that “you would like to do” when most of the time, you should simply do it. It makes no difference if you are addressing a group of 50 people in a small venue or speaking to a client on the phone. You are essentially putting yourself in a very weak position where you can't get things done.
And if you are pleading with your audience, your prospects or your clients, then you haven’t made a solid business case to them, or more importantly, to yourself.
The challenge with “I would like to” is that it’s been drilled into us since we were children. We’ve been taught that phrases like “I would like to” are essential for good manners and getting along with people.
I have nothing against good manners and getting along with people. The problem arises when we habituate the behavior. We make statements like this because it’s been ingrained into us, not because we are choosing to be effective.
The next time you have the urge to say something like, “I would like to schedule an appointment with you to see if this is a good fit”, fight the urge. Instead, say something like, “Something that we typically do is sit down with our new clients to perform an interview and insure that this is a good fit. I have Tuesday at 1:00PM and Wednesday at 2:00 PM currently open. Which one works for you?”
Does this mean that the phrase, “I would like to…” is bad? Absolutely not.
There are times when you would want to use it. There are times when you can make your prospect feel more at ease. There are times when you will want to “reset” their frame of mind and this phrase can be an excellent way of making this happen. However, when we turn on the autopilot and use the phrase habitually, then we are not being as effective as we can be when we are connecting with our prospects.
Take command of your presentation, your cold calls and your voicemails. Stop making wishes with “I would like to” and follow Nike's sage advice: Just Do It.
Nobody Cares About What You or I Want
When I went through my instructor training, the master trainer beaned me on my head so many times I couldn’t rub the bumps fast enough before I broke this habit.
Standing in front of an audience and telling them what you want to do is the same as saying, “What you people in the audience want is insignificant in comparison to what I want.”
It’s a put off. They don’t care about what I want.
Now think about the client or prospect that you are cold calling.
Let me repeat: the prospect that YOU are calling. They aren’t calling you… you are calling them. In fact, you are cold calling them!
They have a million things going on and a whole lot on their plate. And then you call into their office out of the blue and somewhere in the conversation, you say, “I want to…”
What’s going through their mind? “The nerve of this guy, calling me in the middle of my day, interrupting my workflow with some cockamamie demands. Who care’s what he wants anyway. My profits are sliding, I’m trying to figure out how to make payroll next month, and this guy calls me out of the blue telling me what he wants.”
And you wonder why it’s so hard to get a meeting with your prospects or to get a return call from your voicemails.
When you are making your cold calls, leaving voicemails, or standing in front of an audience delivering a presentation, refrain from saying, “What I want…” because your audience really doesn’t care. What they care about are their problems, their company, and their lives.
And that is where you need to focus your attention, on what they want, not what you want.
Good, Bad or Effective Cold Calling
There are some other gems that I’ve heard used and we’ll outline those on another day. I must reiterate that these words and phrases are not “bad” when we use them in making cold calls or leaving voicemails. However, using them habitually will make us ineffective when we are conducting sales over the phone.
By becoming aware of what you say and how you say it, you can heat up your performance when making sales over the phone and in your face-to-face sales calls.
If you can direct your conversation to what is on their mind and use your words to help shape your prospects’ attention, you will start getting results from your cold calls, your voicemails will get returned, and most importantly, you’ll set your sales on fire.

Put A Linkedin HTML Signature In Gmail To Make Your Message Stand Out

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 04:40:00 +0000

While perusing my web stats, I noticed that a search kept coming up regarding how to put a LinkedIn button into an email signature, Gmail in particular.

I’ve seen these queries in the past and had even looked into putting some kind of LinkedIn button into the signature file of my Google Gmail messages. While there are email apps that will allow you to use html tags in the signature file, the one downfall of Gmail messaging is that it will only accept text characters in the signature box. It won’t accept HTML tags.

Today, however, I decided to take a quick spin on Google to see what was actually out there. And while I didn’t find a clean solution, I did find “A” solution and a Linkedin function that I had previously forgotten about.

However, this is truly a case of “buyer beware” because this workaround is more of a hack.

While it is simple to do and it will integrate your Linkedin signature with your outgoing Gmail message, this is not a push button configuration.

Here’s what I mean.

With your typical text signature, like the one you’ve typed into the Gmail signature box, the minute you hit the “compose message” button to create your next message, your signature file is automatically loaded into the body of the message before you even start typing.

You set the signature up once and you don’t have to worry about it ever again, until you are ready to change it.

With this particular hack, you have to install it every time you send off an email.

So if you have 15 emails to send off, this activity is what is commonly called overhead and it can be very high, significantly impacting your time management activities.

Do you want to do this activity every time you send out an email? Probably not.
But if you are trying to impress a client, or if you want to push your LinkedIn profile to encourage your certain clients and prospects to connect with you, this could be a useful hack.

Still game? Then read on.

Getting The Linkedin HTML Signature

Turns out that some email apps will allow you to compose a rich signature file. Unfortunately, Gmail is not on that list. Gmail doesn’t support HTML tags in the signature file – yet. However, Gmail will allow you to drag and drop HTML objects into the compose pane. So you can create an email signature that looks real nice in LinkedIn, highlight the whole object, copy it and then past it into the body of the Gmail message.

First, get the signature.

Log into your Linkedin account and scroll down to the bottom of the page:

When you get to the bottom, you will see menu items that are more utilitarian. You want the “overview” link under the “Tools” heading. This will take you to the Linkedin Tools overview page. On this one, get down to the “email Signature” section and hit the “Try it Now” button:

When you hit the “Try it Now” button, you will be taken to the “Create Email Signature” page where you will have an opportunity to create your signature.

Linkedin provides several layouts that you can choose from.

Select your layout that you like. Linkedin will also backfill some of the information, like your name, headline and company. But you will need to supply some additional information like phone number, the address or your company’s website, any additional websites that you have, and your company’s address.

Once you have it set up the way you want, you can transfer it over to your Gmail message.

Bringing over your Linkedin Signature over to your Gmail Message

In another browser window, open our Gmail account. Here we again are using our old standby, the EPW Test Dude.

Go ahead and compose your message as you normally would:

When you have your message composed, go back to the browser holding your Linkedin session and highlight the signature that you just made:

Then, copy the highlighted section:

And then paste it into the body of the message that you have finished composing in your Gmail browser window:

Then, it just a matter of sending it off. When it arrives, it will look something like this:

You’ll notice the funny little boxes in place of the missing graphics. The graphics aren’t gone. They just aren’t being displayed. As with most email programs, the default setup is to not display graphics, so count on your recipient not initially seeing your pictures. However, by merely clicking the link “Display images below” you can make the app display them.

See?

Quick, simple and easy.

However, this is by no means automated. So as I said at the top of this post, you’ll have to repeat the process for every email that you want to send out with the Linkedin profile signature. Not exactly the most heartwarming of thoughts, but it is possible to include a Linkedin profile in our outgoing email.

Kudos to Amit Agarwal at Digital Inspiration for discovering the hack.

Linkedin Networking Event In Cleveland Today At 5:00 PM

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:26:00 +0000

It appears that Lewis Howes has outdone himself again.

This month’s LinkedIn Networking event in Cleveland looks like it will top 400 attendees. This number reflects only those people who have RSVPed using LinkedIn and doesn’t include the “walk ins” who are just discovering the event for the first time.

And while I’m sure that he’ll have plenty of books on hand like he did at the last event, I think this month’s “Big Idea” was the joint Online Marketing Workshop that he put on with Social Media Mogul, Jim Kukral earlier today.

That one, I had to miss, unfortunately. I’m sure that there were a couple of ideas outlined in that workshop that could be immensely useful in the future (like within the next day or two).

Hey -- maybe there will be an MP3 or a video of the workshop that we all can download.

Anyway, if you were like me and you had a scheduling conflict in the morning, then be sure to pick up stakes, pack up your stuff at 5:00 PM today and head on over to the RockBottom Café in Cleveland.

Good people. Good food. Good times.

If you are lucky, maybe you’ll run into one of the 40 people that were in this morning’s session and they’ll tell you the secrets that were shared at the workshop.

Gmail vs MS Outlook - Cost Savings Found When Microsoft Outlook Ousted for Gmail at British Construction Firm - CIO - Business Technology Leadership

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 28 May 2009 15:15:00 +0000

In a series of earlier posts, I did a basic outline of 12 reasons why migrating over to Gmail and Google Apps from Lotus Notes made sense. When I was outlining these reasons, I had the small business in mind, and field sales people in particular.
When you think about our current economic environment, a company with 10 to 100 employees really is stretched pretty thin and everybody needs to focus on the activies that are going to make a difference. Anything that C-level executives can do to outsource standard tasks, like email maintenance, will free up their human capital to tackle more interesting and profitable challenges.

This concept is not lost on the big companies, so it's not really an equalizing competitive advantage any more -- it's more of a requirement to keeping up.
Here is an article from CIO Magazine that depicts how the IT Director at Taylor Woodrow, a UK construction firm, migrated their email activities from Microsoft Outlook over to Google Apps premier edition for enterprises and saved $2M in the process.
Take a peek at this article and discover the reasons why they made the migration over to Google Apps.
As if $2M isn't enough of a reason!
Good Selling!
Cost Savings Found When Microsoft Outlook Ousted for Gmail at British Construction Firm - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership
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Google Alerts Used For Sales Success

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 28 May 2009 03:52:00 +0000

In a prior post, we looked at four reasons to open a Google account and set up Google Alerts to monitor certain items in the cloud. Those reasons were...

Keep an eye on your reputation.

To do sales research.

To conduct a job search.

Keeping tabs on you (as in when your name pops up in the cloud).

You know, we don't have time to go scour the 'net and find every single thing out there about the thing we want to keep tabs on. So why not make them come to you?
While reviewing some of my email, I noticed this gem from another sales writer, Jim Klein. In his newsletter, a reprint from his blog, he essentially stated that the difference between the sales rep who is getting ahead in this ugly economic climate and the ones that are falling behind is the information that they can access and leverage.
His suggestion? Use Google alerts!
Here is an excerpt from his blog. Take a peek:

Set up an account with Google Alerts. You can set up alerts for keywords pertaining to your particular industry, your competitors, yourself or anything else you want to keep an eye on. Then you can get notified daily on any articles or news stories pertaining to the specific topics, and stay on top of the latest developments in your industry.Jim, From The Heart Sales Training Blog, May 2009

Check out the whole article, How To Increase Sales In Any Economy, when you get the chance. There are some additional choice bits in there that are common sense, but not commonly practiced.
Bottom line, set yourself up a Google account and set your alerts.
Don't know how? Then get a crash course at my previous post, 4 Reasons To Implement Google Alerts Now.
Good Selling!

Linkedin Cleveland and Columbus Events

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 27 May 2009 03:53:00 +0000

What we have here is an unprecedented Linkedin opportunity.

If you’ve ever wondered how Linkedin can help you find your next job, find your next gig, increase your sales or find some really cool like-minded people, then you do not want to miss this event.

Lewis Howes, co-author of the book, “LinkedWorking” is again organizing his Cleveland Linkedin and Columbus Linkedin events.

And this time there’s a twist.

In Columbus, on May 28th (the day after), Lewis will be conducting a half-day workshop with social media guru and trainer Kevin Nations on how to leverage all of your social media activity into big ticket sales of your products and services.

Event details are found here: The Social Media Profit Machine (Columbus Workshop)

And in Cleveland, on June 3rd (the morning of), Lewis will work with Jim Kukral, Cleveland’s own Business Web Coach, in putting on a workshop from 10:00 to noon, on using the web 2.0 tools to maximize your business marketing exposure.

Event details are found here: Social Media and Online Marketing Workshop (Cleveland)

There’s something for everyone here. If you are a procrastinator, then now is the time to act. Hop in your car and attend the Columbus Linkedin Networking event on May 27.

If you hate procrastinating and love to work everything to a schedule, then register for the Cleveland Linkedin Networking event on June 3rd and drive up at your leisure.

If you are looking for some serious “how to” stuff, then register for the workshops that Lewis will be conducting with these two very interesting social media players.

And if you are just looking to get with other people in this area who are making things happen and hoping that some of their social media magic will rub off on you, then come to the networking events, have a beer and be prepared to spend some time with some great people.

See you at the party.

Time Management Idea for Sales People

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:43:00 +0000

Just recently I saw a sales rep ask a time management question concerning how much time he should be spending in his sales activities when compared to his administration work.

After keeping a time log, this sales rep discovered that he was spending a lot of his time engaged in administrative type stuff and spending a small percentage of his time in front of clients. Apparently, his managers placed a high priority on completing paperwork and this sales rep wanted to know if this was standard for anyone in sales looking to manage their time effectively.

When I did some work with a network marketing group, one of my mentors had a cartoon that he liked to bring out whenever the topic of time management and administration came up. The cartoon depicted a toddler sitting on a toilet next to a roll of toilet paper. The toddler in his picture had a really grumpy look on his face.

The caption read, “No job is finished until the paperwork is done!”

Text art at its best. Original can be found at textfiles.com

I agree with my past mentor that sometimes you just have to sit down and get the job completed, no matter how distasteful. But some of this stuff doesn’t have to be done by you.

For example, we use Salesforce.com here to manage our resources and our client information. We encourage all sales reps to enter in as much information as possible and as correctly as possible. This information proves to be invaluable to the sales rep when they create their solution or they return back to the client and make the case for additional services.

Initially, this information is nowhere else except in the sales rep’s mind. If anything should happen to the sales rep, for instance, if they go on vacation out in the middle of the desert where there is no cell reception, then this information is not accessible. Or, if the sales rep forgets it, then it is gone forever.

So we encourage our reps to take advantage of the organized framework that Salesforce.com provides by scheduling out a block of time and correctly putting that information into the system on a regular basis.

Here are two reasons for getting that information into Salesforce.com.

First, if it is entered in correctly and in a timely fashion, then a lot of other repetitive administrative work can be automated, such as report generation, marketing campaign creation and follow up scheduling. This is the type of repetitive administrative type work that we don’t want our sales reps spending the majority of their time conducting.

Paradoxically, when they manage their time to enter this information into the system, it actually saves them time later on in the sales process, freeing them up for completing high value tasks.

As a sales rep, you should be spending your time doing high value tasks. And while administrative tasks are necessary, they really don’t bring in any money. Think about it; when was the last time you met your quota by doing only paperwork?

You need to be out there engaging current and potential customers because that’s where the money is.

Second, while they are important, administrative tasks can be performed by almost anyone. You, however, are the only one who can lead your client through the sale process from opening to close. So when we look at this from a resource deployment perspective, it’s just poor planning to have you do activities that someone else can do while you ignore the activities that only you and no one else can do.

When we talk about time management in our advance programs, effective delegation often comes up as one of the time saving processes that all managers and sales people say is essential but everyone agrees that they can be better at implementing it.

So for all of you sales reps that don’t want to fill in important information about your client in Salesforce.com, just buck up and do it in the off hours because it will help you organize overall account strategy.

On the other hand, if you find that you are behind a desk creating reports instead of out talking with clients, then you aren’t managing your time wisely. It’s time to get with your sales manager and present your case for a sales administrator, so you can free up your time to do what you do best.

Gmail Can Now Undo Sending The Message

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 23 May 2009 22:07:00 +0000

Top 12 Gmail Features That Leave Lotus Notes Dusted In This Era Of Social Media

Point 12: Lotus Notes Email Can Be Transferred, Forwarded and Archived, But Gmail Can Undo A Send!

OK. This is way cool, not to mention extremely useful.

How often have you read an email, got very emotional, banged out a response while still hot, and after hitting the “send” button said, “I wish I hadn’t done that”?

How many of you had that heavy feeling punch you in the stomach after you prematurely hit the “send” button before you cleaned out the “cc:” field ?

If you use Lotus Notes, Outlook or any other email applications, then you know that feeling all too well.

Well, the team at Gmail is experimenting with a feature that delays sending out your message, giving you some time to stop the process and insure that the message that is about to go out is the message that you really want to go out.

This is not meant to correct those hot-under-the-collar emails that you blast off and then have a change of heart after a good night's sleep.

But for those silly mistakes that we make, like forgetting to clear out the “cc:” field, replying to all, or forgetting to attach the PDF you’re sharing, this can be the thing that saves the day.

Don’t think Lotus Notes will be putting this feature in any time soon.

So, how do you enable this little feature in Gmail?

Here’s how:

We start with our favorite test account, the EPW Test Dude.

Click the “Settings” link in the upper right hand side. This will bring you to the “Settings” page:

When there, click on the “Labs” link. This will bring you to the “Labs” section where Google opens their new ideas and applications for testing, trials and sneak peaks:

Scroll down to the section entitled “Undo Send”:

You want to change this setting to “Enable” to turn this feature on. After selecting “Enable”, scroll down to the bottom of the screen and hit the “Save Changes” button.

Now you are ready for action.

You are taken back to the Gmail Inbox window. Hit “Settings” again and you’ll notice a couple of things have changed in the “Settings” window. First, you’ll see a little green flask next to the “Settings” link indicating that you are using some of the new Google Labs features. Second, you’ll see a new section called “Undo Send”. Here, you can set the amount of delay time that the feature will give you before it actually sends your email out. The default is ten seconds.

Back to the inbox window, we begin the process of sending a message. Here we are sending an email message to the voicemailcoach at salesittech.com:

It’s simply a test message, but when we hit the send button, we find some additional links come up:

It tells us that the message has been sent. However, now we are given the option of either undoing the send or viewing the sent message.

If you hit the “Undo” link, the message is not sent out and it pops back to the email compose window.

You cannot begin to imagine how this little feature will begin to uncomplicated your life.

Often I’ll see a sales rep make a good call to a prospect. There will be some hiccups along the way, but overall, the process moves forward. The sales rep will then send an email to a third sales rep if an onsite is required to bring to bring them up to speed and provide some insight into the nature and the potential client’s. The problem, they also unwittingly copy the client on the email.

How many times have you done that?

Or maybe you sent an email to your boss but you forgot that your original composition was set as a reply to your potential client.

Or maybe you were ready to send out a mass mailing for your e-newsletter and you included the names of the recipients in the “to:” line instead of the “BCC:” field, exposing the email address of all of your recipients and making them angry in the process.

In all of these cases, having the ability to “undo” that send can save you untold shame, pain and aggravation, days of apologizing, and maybe a sale or two in the process.

Put the “Undo” option in effect as soon as you can. You may not need it often, but when you do, it can spare you a lot of aggravation.

Gmail Is Constantly Developing

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 22 May 2009 19:41:00 +0000

Top 12 Gmail Features That Leave Lotus Notes Dusted In This Era Of Social Media

Point 10: Gmail Is Constantly Being Developed And Improved

Yes, Gmail is a constantly growing and developing application. The developers, or maybe we should call them Santa’s helpers, are constantly working on new and different plugins and additions that keep Gmail at the forefront of technology.

There is no waiting for the next revision, the next release ,or purchasing upgrades. With Google’s labs constantly churning out new applications to improve email operation and flexibility, you can rest assured that Gmail leading the pack in messaging technology

And aside from being on the cutting edge, some of these developments are just plain cool, like Point 12…