The Thoughts And Ideas Of The Efficiency Coach

B2B Social Media: Be There, Be Relevant, Be Proven

Heather Townsend — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 08:00:13 +0000

This blog post is a little different than normal… it’s not been written by me! Time and time again, I keep coming back to this blog post, and so I thought it only fair that I share it with you too. It is written by Bryony Thomas, chief clear thinker for ‘Clear Thought Consulting Ltd‘. Clear Thought Consulting, is a company that I highly respect for their marketing knowledge and the results they consistently manage to achieve on behalf of their clients.

So, without more ado, introducing

B2B Social Media: Be There, Be Relevant, Be Proven

Our clients, and most people we’ve met and talks and events recently, have asked the same question: Is social media appropriate for business-to-business marketing? Unequivocally, the answer is YES.

In the last year, 40% of Clear Thought’s revenue can be tracked back to a social media source, and 100% has been enhanced or aided by it in some way. In the last six weeks alone, here are some things that Clear Thinkers have achieved through social media:

Hooked up two people met through Twitter with paying B2B clients.
Received two good quality new business enquiries, both of which are now at proposal stage.
Sourced experts willing to talk to us about their business as part of market research projects.
Enhanced relationships with prospective businesses using online nurturing techniques.

In B2B decision-making or considered purchases, social media has most impact in the top half of the sales funnel

From a new business perspective, social media has critical impact in the first three stages of the sales funnel. That is, Awareness, Interest and Evaluation. From a social media perspective, you need to do the following:

To generate awareness: ‘Be There’ find out where your prospects hang out online and have a presence there.

To convert awareness into interest: ‘Be Relevant’ provide information that is useful or controversial to pull people into your content.

To make it through evaluation: ‘Be Proven’ provide case studies and testimonials at every turn online, ideally with other people talking on your behalf.

To really make the most of the channel, it makes sense to get some expert support – particularly in measuring and enhancing your activity. But, here are some really simple things to get you started.

10 FREE things you can do to generate awareness online:

Ensure your company & all employees have a LinkedIn profiles.
Join or set-up an interest group on LinkedIn.
Set-up a SlideShare space, link it to your LinkedIn profile.
Set-up a You-Tube Channel or Facebook page (if appropriate).
Set-up a company Twitter Feed.
Bookmark your content (StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, etc).
Set up a BT Tradespace profile.
Set-up Google, BlogSpot and WordPress identities.
Comment on, or become a contributor to, blogs and forums.
Regularly update email signatures with new content.

10 FREE things you can do to generate interest online:

Post snappy links to content via Twitter, Status, Email footer, etc.
Post regular interesting short blogs (10 mins).
Prepare deeper content like pressos, papers and articles (20 mins).
Give each of your team an area of expertise to track and comment.
Post details of other people’s content relevant to your audience.
Comment on industry news and happenings… in real time.
Make sure all employees regularly update online statuses.
Follow-up traditional touch-points with online contact.
Gather permissions to send email updates.
Ask intelligent questions in online forums.

10 (nearly) FREE ways to prove your credentials online:

Provide written case studies on your site, Blog, etc.
140 character lines to link back to your case studies, articles, etc.
Post case study videos on your site, You-Tube channel, etc.
Post webcasts and presentations on your site, SlideShare, etc.
Post product demos on You-Tube, SlideShare, etc.
Re-use the words of others about your products and services.
Provide intelligent answers to questions posted in Forums, Groups
Run live Q&A sessions via Twitter.
Add a customer feedback / rating system (like Kampyle) to your site, blog, etc and re-use the positive feedback.
Ask LinkedIn contacts for endorsements.

Note: In this blog, we’re focusing specifically on lead generation. It is worth noting (and blogging in the future) that social media can be powerfully used in market research, recruitment, lead nurturing and much more.

You might also be interested in other relevant content from Clear Thought Consulting:

Bryony’s 30 minute webcast on generating online word of mouth on SlideShare:
Bryony’s social media through the sales funnel - 10 minute video

Bryony Thomas is a proven and qualified marketer, with over a decade of experience working with businesses large and small. Most recently, Bryony was Director of Marketing for Experian’s UK integrated marketing business. Previous roles include Director of Marketing for ClarityBlue, Marketing Specialist for Lloyds TSB and Senior Account Manager for Mason Zimbler. Having worked both as the client and in marketing agencies, Bryony has a unique perspective on the marketing industry and how to get the most from it. Over the years, clients have included Microsoft, Dell, Quantum, Oracle, RUH Hospital, Westonbirt Arboretum, Samaritans, Mind, and many more. Bryony holds an MBA with distinction, a CIM Diploma and a BSc in Politics.

If you are struggling with getting into social media, but want to use it to generate business, why not look at this new exciting social media training product we have put together in conjunction with Sharp End Training:

The Social Media Apprentice – A 20 week on-line training programme

The social media apprentice, guarantees to get you and your business up and running properly with social media, so that you start to generate real business by the end of the programme.

Monday cartoon 8-3-2010

Heather Townsend — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 07:31:29 +0000

We are all very excited about our first product launch today – The social media apprentice, a 20 week social media training programme, which will support you, step by step, to start to win business via social media, launches today.

The programme is fully on-line, so you can complete it whenever or wherever is convenient for you. Unlike most social media training programmes, anyone that signs up will have access to exclusive on-line forums just for programme participants. Here you can ask questions and get on-line help from the likes of myself.

This weekly cartoon is for anyone who is busy, but not achieving their potential yet!

How to make the jump to junior partner

Heather Townsend — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 07:12:41 +0000

Surely, a partner role is just the same as an assignment manager with a bit of other stuff chucked in? Well, no. Is it just a title for appearances sake & business cards? Well, no…These are some of the reasons why so many people fail to make the grade as a partner, because they don’t fully make the transition from assignment manager to partner. It may be that they are not equipped to make the change, or as sometimes happens, the firm they are in does not let them make the transition.

In some firms there is often an intermediary step between assignment manager and partner – the director role. In our experience, most directors tend to be assignment managers who have special responsibilities either for technical matters or business development.

Let’s look at a junior partner role in this post…

Most new junior partners need to make a large shift in their work-based values and how they will now spend their time. As an assignment manager you can either have a fixed, but more often, temporary team to lead and motivate, and you hold the day to day relationship with the client.

The first shift that new partners need to make is that they are now responsible for winning work, as well as leading teams of teams. This is an almost universal feature of any partner’s position in any firm. There are only a very few large professional practices that can have partners who are not measured on their ability to directly win work. For many new partners, business development is a new skill set to learn – and one that they need to learn quickly. Switched on firms will allow staff to develop consultative selling skills as they progress through the ranks.

The second shift for new partners is one of accountability. The buck now stops here. Any new business owner will tell you it can be a very lonely place at the top of a firm; but ultimately a new partner now has sign off authority and is responsible to ‘delighting’ and retaining the clients in their portfolio. Their name and professional credibility is only as good as the last piece of work which went out the door. With the many demands on a partner’s time, and an often impossibly high utilisation target, this day-to-day communication with clients is often dropped to the bottom of the priority list.

As a junior partner, you move from being a manager of others to being a manager of managers, or in smaller firms, a manager of a function. At first sight this may be a simple transition. However, this is often not the case. The challenge is here is how to reallocate your time so that you are focusing on translating firm-wide strategy into what it means for your team/function… and how you are coaching and developing your assignment managers. The work that your assignment managers send out, has your name on it… therefore, rather than letting yourself get involved in the juicy technical bits of the job, your role is to empower your assignment managers to get on and complete the client assignments.

You may have noticed that I have not mentioned client work yet. As a member of a professional practice, there will always be an element of chargeable client work that you are responsible for completing. However, your role now is to motivate, develop and lead your assignment managers and their teams to complete this work – rather than you personally getting your hands dirty. Ultimately you are responsible for developing the next generation of partners. If you stay fixed in the assignment manager role, then you will clog your firm’s leadership pipeline, and prevent high potential assignment manager’s from developing their future skill set to make partner.

Many junior partners face the challenge of being given a personal high utilisation figure which prevents them from focusing on the key non-chargeable areas of their role as partner, namely, business development, staff development and translation of firm wide strategy into functional strategy. In my opinion, this is a short-sighted and non-nonsensical practice. If you want partners to lead the firm, why ask them to still be technical experts? Ultimately, it is the success in these non-chargeable areas which will be the yardsticks which others measure your success by….

How does frog eating help me be more productive?

Heather Townsend — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:59:43 +0000

Suddenly on twitter everyone seems to be talking about eating frogs. Whilst I am very much a fan of French cuisine, and have been known to munch a few ‘escargot’ while in France… what’s all this frog eating got to do with serious business people? Why should I also join the crowd and start munching frogs? And what happens if I am a veggie?

Very simply frog eating refers to a book and concept by Brian Tracy called ‘eat that frog’ There’s an old saying that if the first thing you do in the morning is to eat a live frog, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that it’s probably the worst thing you’ll do all day.

Brian Tracy, in his book, takes this saying as a metaphor for tackling the most challenging task of your day – the one you are most likely to procrastinate on, but also probably the one that will have the greatest positive impact on your life.

There is normally only myself to keep me accountable and focused on what really matters. Some days I wonder whether there is anyone worse than me for procrastinating on the jobs that I don’t enjoy doing. Not that I’m asking to go back into corporate life or get another boss. (Heaven forbid!) However, I’ve been looking for a solution to help me with my procrastination. After all I have a reputation and image as The Efficiency Coach to maintain!

I can honestly say that on the days I choose (and that’s the key) to ‘eat my frog’, I am more focused and productive. But it’s more than that… the sense of relief that I get from getting the job done that I was putting off is palatable. Plus the momentum of getting the task out of the way, normally gets me through the next few tasks in double quick time.

So, if you have some important tasks that you are putting off, why not try to eat your frog first?

How to make a six figure income… the easy way!

Heather Townsend — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:11:50 +0000

Ha, I bet that headline caught your eye… It’s what many scams, pyramid schemes and networking marketing schemes use to entice you to read their marketing materials. Some of you may remember that I’ve blogged before on the subject of get rich quick schemes. But, enough about scams et al, in today’s blog post, I wanted to talk about this magical six figure income – that is deemed to be a universally motivating salary. Like many people, I thought the ‘six figure income’ was a number quoted by (potentially slightly less than honest) internet marketing folk to entice people in, because it was a good solid round number.

Since being in business almost a year – our first birthday is on the 13^th March, I’ve discovered another reason for quoting the ‘six figure income’. As a small business owner, a personal salary of over six figures is very hard to achieve. Yes, a bit of a reality check for all those of you who think independent coaches, consultants or trainers earn massive amounts of money for what we do!

I’ll explain a little more… Many professionals who start up a professional practice use a solely time based business model. Whilst there is nothing wrong with this business model, the only way to earn more than a personal six figure income is to bolt on more fee earning members of staff. My reasoning? To earn top dollar, you must spend a considerable amount of effort on marketing your business. This time spent marketing in your business is non-chargeable… unless you have a service offering which lends itself to recurring annual work, such as accountancy, you are extremely limited in the amount of recurring work you will receive. If you do the maths, by the time you have completed all your marketing and networking to gain a 50+% utilisation rate, you don’t have enough time left to do the work.

So, if you don’t want to hire more staff, how do you as a small business person achieve the magical £100k+ annual salary?

The first solution is to value-price your work, so that you are billing proportionate to the value you bring. This, in itself, may be half the solution to raising your earning potential over the £100k mark.

The second solution is to add some products into your mix. If you are a training provider or a coach, think about offering some open programmes, teleseminars or on-line training programmes. If you are a consultant, think about offering some products in a box – for example, the start-up business guide to marketing. If you are a lawyer, how about some standard templates, e.g. terms and conditions?

What’s your personal solution to breaking the six figure salary barrier?

I’ve been promoted to assignment manager… what does that mean?

Heather Townsend — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 07:01:48 +0000

The world of professional services has numerous differences to the corporate world. One of these differences is that fee-earners within professional services retain an element of client or ‘technical’ work regardless of whether they are a trainee, newly qualified or a partner. Most professional service firms don’t have a neat, orderly structure – they are a matrix organisation, with a pool of talent that assignment managers can call upon.

Promotion in a professional services firm can often be a messy procedure. Many firms make their promotions at set points in the year, others promote on-demand. Either way, most people are doing the role, before the official title comes their way. Retention of talent in a professional service firm relies on staff members being able to progress their career within the firm.

In the next three blog posts, I am going to look at the skills and values that must change in a person, as they climb the management ladder within a professional services firm.

New, young employees usually spend their early years in a formal or informal training contract, building their technical skill set, understanding and accepting the firm’s culture, and getting professional qualifications under their belt. At this stage in their career, they are normally an individual contributor within the firm, working on different assignments for different assignment managers.

As the individual deepens their technical skill set, and gets a reputation for producing good results, in a timely fashion, and collaborating well in a team, they are often promoted… or given more responsibility so that eventually they are running an assignment unaided. Many firms make the mistake of promoting people from ‘individual contributor’ to ‘assignment manager’, without helping them develop the new skill set and values needed from an assignment manager.

Just to confuse you a little more, titles give to assignment managers can vary from supervisor, manager, associate, consultant, senior consultant, managing consultant etc

An assignment manager needs to be able to plan work, allocate resources and work, budget, build a team, motivate, develop and coach others and measure the work of others. These new skills and responsibilities need to be mastered, as well as knowing what work to delegate down and what to keep. All too often, ineffective assignment managers will hold onto work, rather than delegate it down and fail to allocate time to manage the people on the assignment. To avoid this, senior members of the firm, need to help new assignment managers reallocate some of their time to helping members of their assignment team perform effectively, as well as get their own work done.

A values shift is needed when a person moves into an assignment manager role. They must learn to value the managerial work, rather than tolerating it. This is often a hard pill to swallow, as a professional service attracts people who like being technical specialists.

In my next blog post, I will be looking at the transition a person must make when they go from assignment manager to ‘manager of managers’.

Monday cartoon 1-3-2010

Heather Townsend — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 06:45:00 +0000

Pinch, punch 1st day of the month… This cartoon is for anyone who is looking at the monthly bills!

How to help your business get FITTER through networking

Heather Townsend — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 07:21:35 +0000

There are many classic mistakes that people make when networking. For example, the biggest mistake people make when networking is directly or indirectly selling to people they meet.

Not that I would ever excuse you of selling when you are out networking. However, so many people treat networking as one big jolly conversation. Networking, without purpose or focus, is a massive waste of time AND money. If I know professional advisors, most of them can ill-afford to waste time.

Before you book your next networking event, keep this mnemonic in mind – it will help you achieve more at the event:

F Follow up after the event

I Introduce yourself with impact

T Target specific people

T Turn a social chat into a business conversation

E Enter and breakout of groups

R Research

Find out who is attending the event, in advance – not at the event, and find out more about the other attendees. If you do your research right, you will know who you want to target for a conversation – plus have opinions and thoughts on relevant news and trends for your target audience . Most hosts, if asked, will send out an attendee list before the event.

Once at the event, make sure you introduce yourself with impact – that means a confident handshake – and can talk about how you add value to your clients, rather than talking about what you do. For example, “I help my clients legally minimise the tax they pay”, has far more impact than, “I’m an accountant”.

Interestingly, this type of introduction already turns your conversation onto business matters. You may be wondering how? Well, after you have introduced yourself by the value you bring to your clients, the next question is normally, “So, how do you do that”… and, your conversation is already onto business matters.

When you are out networking you are out to meet ideally as many potential referrers as possible. If you linger with one or two, you potentially lose out on the opportunity of meeting three or four more potential referrers. Therefore, you must be prepared to break into and out of groups. The golden rules here are to always ask permission to enter or exit a group. If you want to encourage more people to enter a group, then always leave a gap facing into the room.

And finally, follow up, means doing what you said you would do at the event. If someone has given you their business card, this means they have given you permission to contact them after the event – but not to send them your newsletter. I personally always drop anyone I met a brief e-mail saying how much I enjoyed meeting them.

How to deliver an after dinner speech which gets you invited back again

Heather Townsend — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 07:12:53 +0000

Many people fall into the trap of thinking that an after dinner speech is just the same as giving any old presentation. Wrong. An after dinner speech – similar to a best man’s speech – has its own set of rules. Know and work to these rules, and you will be asked back, get these rules wrong, don’t expect to generate any opportunities from your evenings exertions.

Firstly, let’s look at the after dinner speech. Regardless of your subject matter you are there to entertain. Yes, amuse, interest, captivate… but most importantly entertain.

Too short a speech and people will feel like they have been short changed, too long a speech and you will find your audience lose interest. So, how long should an after dinner speech be? About 20 mins, or as the average speaker talks at about 100 words a minute, 2000 words.

An after dinner speaker is generally very ‘naked’. Generally, the use of powerpoint or other such standard presenters tools the are frowned upon for an after dinner speech.

Without the use of props or tools, the content of what you are saying and how you are saying it, becomes all important. A strong opening or beginning is vital – get it right, and you have the audience listening intently to you all the way through, get it wrong and you lose the audience before you even start. To get your headline right, think about your audience and what will ‘hold’ or ‘grab’ their attention.

Here is the opener, I used recently for a talk on twitter which I gave as an after dinner speech… “To tweet or not to tweet. THAT is the question”

As you think about your content, decide on what is relevant to the audience, and what will interest them. Do keep your speech on one main theme. For example, my speech on twitter was delivered to small business owners, and was focused on how small business owners can use twitter to generate business. A subject near and dear to every small business owner’s heart!

For some people, 20 minutes can seem like an eternity. However, most speakers when getting into their stride, can easily cover more than 20 minutes. Don’t try and cover the whole length & breadth of your topic. Interlace your speech with lots of anecdotes and personal stories to illustrate your points. Keep your speech simple. You normally don’t have the luxury of slides to describe diagrams or complex theories. Nor do you have the luxury of going back and showing a slide again, to revisit a piece of theory again.

Humour and presentations is the subject of many a big debate. My view is to avoid pre-prepared jokes – but do think about adding in a few chosen humorous comments or tip-bits.

To help keep you, the speaker, on track, do use index cards. Prepare your index cards so that they are numbered in order, and tagged together in the right order. There is nothing worse than a speaker who doesn’t use index cards and goes completely off piste for a metaphorical ‘ramble’.

And finally, don’t be tempted to give handouts until you get to the end of your slot. Handouts, if given out before, or during your speech, will only decrease your audience’s engagement with you. And let me remind you, that you the speaker, are the most important person in the room while you are delivering your speech.

How to make the RIGHT first impression when working the room

Heather Townsend — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 07:15:49 +0000

First impressions are everything. Get it right, and everything becomes easy. Get it wrong and you are pushing water uphill with a sieve.

Many people will warble on about you have to be your authentic self when meeting people, and get that right, and you will make the right impression. They are sort of right… but what happens if your authentic self, doesn’t make a great first impression.

So, what do I mean by a great first impression? People respond well to warm, positive and confident folk. Very simply, that means offer your handshake first, give them a warm smile and be positive and enthusiastic.

As a slight aside, when I talk about handshakes, there is nothing worse than a wet fish handshake OR a bone-crushing handshake which leaves you gasping for breath. If you don’t know how your handshake is perceived, test it out on friends and get their feedback.

How do I put this delicately? Appearances do count, and stereotypes do exist. If you think of a lawyer, you expect to see a well-tailored suit and a neat appearance. Lawyers take note; however much you want to break out of the mould, a well-fitting suit is probably necessary for your credibility. As many image consultants will tell you, details are important. Chipped nail polish or dirty nails is a no-no, as is missing buttons from a coat, or messy hair. If you have young children, do carefully check your appearance in the mirror before you go out, baby sick down the back is a ‘no-no’!

If you look good, and have a confident handshake, then the battle for the right first impression is nearly won. The last piece of the jigsaw is how you introduce yourself. For many professionals, a big trap is waiting for them, when asked (the almost standard question at a networking event), ‘so what do you do?’ Do you confess and say, I’m an accountant… lawyer… coach… and fall into the trap. Or do you describe what you do by the value you bring to your clients?

The right answer, is to have the one sentence sound bite prepared, which succinctly (yes, succinctly) talks about the value you bring to your clients. It wouldn’t surprise you to know that my sound bite goes like this… “I help professional advisors gain better business results for less effort”. Many people worry that if they use this type of opening, people wouldn’t know what they do. I can see that this is a genuine concern, however, in my experience, whenever this type of opening is used, the next question is ‘oh, that sounds interesting, how do you do that?’. And then you are off, the conversation is started, and you have moved straight into a business conversation. Voila!