Your Tuesday thought – Determination

“It’s a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don’t quit when you’re tired. You quit when the gorilla is tired.”
~ Robert Strauss

Handling Pressure

“Pressure is a word that is misused in our vocabulary. When you start thinking of pressure, it’s because you’ve started to think of failure.” — Tommy Lasorda

This quote was a game-changer for me.  When I read it, I realized that whenever I started something new or big, I felt all this pressure around starting exactly because I was afraid of failing at it.  So now, when I start something new and the voice of fear of failure creeps into my head, I start writing down a list of all the good things that will come out of this new project.  And the funny thing is that the little failure voice suddenly dries up.   And I get excited by the challenge of trying something new and really enjoy myself!

The key to better time management

“In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.”  — Robert Heinlein, American Novelist

This quote reminds us to be ruthless with what we do with our time.  Email is a prime example of that.  It can suck up your whole day and you find yourself at the end of the day without having done anything else on your to-do list.  Or we fall into the bad habit of saying yes to stuff because we always have.  Challenge yourself this week to set some clear goals on what you want to achieve and make those your first priority.

How to Hire Great Sales Reps

My latest article in Make It Business magazine is all about how to hire great sales reps – read it here.

6 Simple Rules For Life

Just reading  John Maxwell’s 6 Simple Rules for Life:

• RULE #1: Put family first.

• RULE #2: Follow the Golden Rule.

• RULE #3 Take care of yourself.

• RULE #4 Choose a positive attitude.

• RULE #5 Have a personal growth plan.

• RULE #6 Give more than you receive.

As a business coach, I see so many people who fail to recognize the importance of Rule #3, especially women.  Not taking care of yourself is like running your car without gas.

And I have met many superstars who follow Rule #5 – they have a personal growth plan and they get where they want to be.   The first time I created this kind of plan for myself, it felt like a foreign language!  It actually felt silly – after all, wasn’t I already in charge of myself and supposedly I knew where I was going?

You can read the whole article here.

Tuesday Thought-Provoker

“You are the way you are because that’s the way you want to be. If you really wanted to be any different, you would be in the process of changing right now.” — Fred Smith

What do you project?

Projection (putting forth your voice)  is one of my latest interests.  Looking at the way people project in meetings, in leadership situations, in relationships, in networking events, at work and in their personal life.  John Maxwell asks a great question in this 1 minute video:  Do I pitch a positive projection to others?  Or a negative one?

I’ve been catching myself at times unconsciously projecting negatively and this video is a good reminder to be aware of how you are projecting, especially when stressed or tired.

10 Ways To Build Up Your Personal Brand

Following our discussion earlier this week about the cost of owning your brand, I thought it best to look at best practices to build that brand personally.  In order to understand what is important to your business its imparative for you to understand who and what you are as an entrepreneur.  Pulled from the Globe and Mail’s article, ”Ten ways to build up your peronal brand“, the key points to retain are the following:

1.  We are faced with an influence economy.  Social capital is the new goodwill.  Tools for measuring social capital are rapidly evolving, based on metrics such as quantity and quality of friends and followers and the ability to influence actions among them.  Tweets and retweets, shares and likes, being circled and adding +1s are the currency of the new influence economy.

2.  Pay attention to influence metrics, but don’t obsess.  While there are tools, like Klout and Hootsuite that are trying to quantify your brand in terms of engagement, influence, expertise and trust.  These scoring schemes are getting smarter.  That being said, do not to ignore nor obsess about them.  Build your personal brand on quality content and personal engagement and you will be well-served in the long run.

3.  Filter quality content to express your unique brand.  By investing the time to find and share what you consider the best information in your area of expertise, you provide a valuable service to your social network and cast your brand in a positive light.

4.  Be a giver and a helper.  Social media is predominantly based on the collective sense of helping others.  Adding value to online discussions and helping people to discover new ways of understanding evokes a reciprocity in them.  Blatant self-promotion or selling is easily filtered out.  If education is the new marketing, then helping could be seen as the new selling.

5.  Your personality is your greatest asset, feel free to share it.  Personality is the distinguishing factor in many human interactions.  But be careful: you still need to filter and decide what is appropriate to share and what isn’t.  Sharing personality is different that sharing private information.  Understand the difference.

6.  You can outsource lots of things, but not your voice.  Your brand is the product of your interactions, contributions and engagements within your social networks.  That is not to say that you can’t enhance your personal brand with external advice, strategy and services.  But don’t think you can hire someone to create your voice for you – any more than you can hire someone to go to the gym and workout for you.

7.  Be knowable, likable and trustworthy.  Conduct yourself with civility and generosity toward others and, generally speaking, try to be a liker not a hater.  Be credible, reliable and personable, while keeping your selfish instincts in check.

8.  Invest in thought leadership.  Sharing your proprietary intellectual capital is one of the best ways to demonstrate your expertise and leadership.  But, how do you build a business on something you’ve given away for free?  If sharing your knowledge grows the market for your services and your leadership within that market, then there’s more to gain than lose.

9.  Personal brands compete with corporate brands.  Social media has empowered individuals to build a direct audience through Twitter, Facebook, Google+, email direct marketing, etc.  And there’s increasing evidence coming from online influence measurement to suggest that personal brands actually exert more pull than established corporate brands in the social media space.

10.  Like it or not, you are a personal brand.  Whether you work for yourself or someone else, whether you’re in sales or marketing or you’re a business professional, if you are engaged in an occupation in which you rely on your reputation you probably should be thinking seriously about your personal brand.  Everyone else is.

Finding a Balance Between Delegation and Micromanagement

In an constantly changing, fast-growing business world the hardest skill for entrepreneurs to master is the art of delegation.  As an entrepreneur growing your small business it can be difficult to “let go” and trust others to be responsible for your organization.

I can tell you, without delegating, you will be unsuccessful.  This does not mean you should delegate all your responsibilities to others, as there are always tasks that you do not HAVE to do.  If you have hired a staff you must believe they are capable of helping you, so let them.  Task them with a responsibility, set expectations and the deadlines that you need to see results and then let them roll with it.  Do not micro-manage them (checking in every 30 minutes IS micro-managing), they likely will not perform as well on the task if you do.  Trust me, you can do this.

Read more on micro-managing vs. delegating via The New York Times, “Finding a Balance Between Delegating and Micromanaging“.

10 Things NOT To Say In A Client Meeting!

A little smile for today!  This article is written by Steve Waterhouse and posted on Eyes on Sales Blog.

1. I’ve never heard of your company before.  What do you make here?
2. Can you buy lunch? I’m a little short this month.
3. Do you have any decision making power or should I be talking with your boss?
4. Let me tell you about our product, then, if there is time, I’d like to hear about your needs.
5. I hope you are ready to buy because I really need to make this sale to keep my job.
6. I know what you want to hear, so let me cut right to the price.
7. Your predecessor called me a jerk and refused to do business with me.
8. Can we get everyone who is interested together now so I don’t have to do my presentation more than once?
9. I know our price is high and our quality is low but that won’t really affect you because our delivery is so slow.
10. Did you hear that our stock price crashed today?

Read full article here.