None of us likes to hear this phrase: “With the economic downturn, I am afraid we just don’t have the resources to keep you on retainer. Sorry, but let’s pick things back up when our fortunes turn the table!”

What YOU think this means: “With the economic downturn, I am afraid we just don’t have the resources to keep you on retainer. Sorry, but let’s pick things back up when our fortunes turn the table! We think you are great! Everybody loves you!”

What this REALLY means: “You’re fired. You bring no value. Go away. And we have no intention of bringing you back, but I said that anyway, because I just wanted to be nice.”

So there is your wake up call for the day. If your client tells you this, it is very likely because they want the easy way out to letting you go. This is much easier to say than “You are fired.”

Let’s be honest, if you were moving the business needle, they never would let you go. They would figure out a way to keep you on board because they saw value in what you were bringing to the table.

This evil phrase can have many meanings, but the following is a short list of why it probably came to this:

1. They saw NO value in what you brought to the table.

2. They couldn’t attribute an ROI to the relationship.

3. They wanted to try something else.

4. In the end, they didn’t really understand what you were bringing to the table.

5. Communication broke down, and you lost touch with key decision maker and influencer.

6. You were lost in the fog, meaning nobody on the team knew if any progress was being made.

So, let’s take some steps and work to prevent this situation from occurring again. Here are few ideas (based on experience) that will have a positive impact going forward:

1. Keep the mission of your engagement clear, simple and focused.

2. Keep open the communication channels.

3. Keep each side accountable, and make sure each side does what it is supposed to do.

4. Understand how to measure success, so that each sides knows where everything stands.

5. Debrief everything, so that both sides know why something worked, and why something failed. Learn. Improve.

6. Don’t rest on your laurels. Keep improving. Keep innovating.

One last thought: often times when a customer let’s you go, citing any number of reasons, the reason is that you began to take the engagement for granted. Your customer can sense this. And that’s not a good place to be.

Become a partner. Become a teammate. Become a part of the family, warts and all. Bring value. Help. Teach. Have impact on moving business forward. Do these things, and you won’t ever hear that phrase from your customer…

What do you think?

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[Todd Schnick is a marketing strategist, helping entrepreneurs become intrepid marketers...]
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[cartoon by hugh macleod]

Are your intrepid habits lighting the way?

To be an intrepid marketer, and to live an intrepid life, here are 10 important habits to have:

1. When you personally meet someone new that you believe should remain an important long-term contact, send a personal, handwritten note to thank them, and tell them how pleased you are to meet them. This will sear you in their memory…I promise.

2. When you meet someone new, someone that you want to deepen a relationship with, subscribe to their blog (if they have one). This way, you can get to know them, comment on meaningful content, and get a sense of what they are about and what is important to them.

3. If you identify someone worth knowing, one way to get to know them is to follow them on Twitter. But don’t stalk them. Don’t send them a direct message and sell them something. And your first tweet shouldn’t be to invite them to coffee. No, you should strike up conversation first. Get to know them. Here are some ways to start conversations on Twitter.

4. Don’t know about you, but I have a ton of meetings with people at various coffee shops. If someone buys you the coffee, send them a personal handwritten thank-you note. If someone buys you lunch…. buys you dinner… gives you a copy of their book… send them a personal handwritten thank-you note. And yes, even if you’ve known them for years…

5. I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating. Read. Read a lot. Read 30 minutes a day. This helps you with continuous learning, this helps you be more creative, this helps you better think through problems and solutions, and this makes you more articulate.

6. Keep your car clean and presentable. What? Really? Did you just suggest this? Yes. I had lunch with a fellow yesterday, and he just so happened to park next to me outside the restaurant. I was glad my car looked nice. I am sure it solidified his impression of me. Little things, you know?

6.5. And while we are at it, dress appropriately too…

7. To get all Tom Peters on you, “excellence is the next five minutes.” Be as excellent as you can be in the next five minutes. Brush your teeth well. Put away the dishes neatly and carefully. Don’t dial-in your blog writing. When you read, be in the moment, and concentrate on the words…soak them in. Excellence isn’t a long-term aspiration. Excellence is every moment. Excellence is the next five minutes [h/t Mr. Peters].

8. Improve your communication skills. And I don’t necessarily mean adopting a better email platform or getting a better mobile phone. I mean, get in the habit of communicating more clearly – and more often – with the people that matter to you. You can wake up one day at 41 years old and realize you’ve done a poor job at this. Change now. Form a new habit to better communicate with customers, friends and family.

9. Make it a habit to share the good works of someone else each and every day. I call this blazespotting. It reflect well on you and your personal brand to showcase someone other than you. But this is harder than it looks. And getting into a discipline to do this – every day – is a great habit to form!

10. And this list wouldn’t be complete without the following: eat well, sleep well, exercise well [and please note, just because this is at the end of the list, it is, in fact, the most important item on the list]. And don’t eat fast food. Just don’t. Life is too short wasting it eating that crap. If all you have time for is McDonalds, you’ve got bigger problems…

So that’s what I got for now. What additional habits would you add?

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[photo from flickr]

We spend a lot of time waiting.

Waiting in line at the grocery store, waiting on hold for customer service, waiting for a client to call back, waiting for a vendor to call back, waiting for some piece of information to help make a more informed decision, waiting for the new book you purchased to ship, etc…

I’ve thought about keeping a stopwatch on me for an entire week and just track the time I spend waiting. But I haven’t, because I suspect it would depress me…

[in fact, if you want to do this exercise at home, here is a tool you can use!]

What is this time spent waiting costing you? Are you missing business opportunities by waiting? Are you missing personal enrichment opportunities by waiting? But enough about you.

What are your customers thinking as they wait on you or your business?

Here some things to think about:

1. Think about and itemize all points your customers must wait for you when interacting with your business. The list may be longer than you think…

2. Are there things you can do to lesson these wait times?

3. What is causing your customer to wait? Not enough staff? Not living up to promises?

4. Is there something productive you can do with that time to ease their wait pain? [I am not suggesting upselling...]

5. Is a wait time necessary? And thus, do you need to educate and communicate better? They say you can train behavior in your customers…

Yikes, me too. Lots of things I need to work on myself.

Personally, I think communication is the most important ally in helping you fight this problem. I’ve written about this before, but I think Tom Peters said most people can deal with a two-hour flight delay, IF the airline makes a conscious effort to keep us continually informed about what is going on…

Here are things to think about – as a business person – to reduce this wait burden on your customers:

1. Well, obviously, improve your communication. Letting people know what is going on is half the battle.

2. You could hire a company to analyze your workforce operation, and optimize your workforce to better manage customer interaction [think having enough customer service agents at a call center, so customers don't have to wait 30 minutes for support]. GMT Corporation, a guest on this week’s High Velocity Radio Show, does this…

3. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. This is a big flaw of many entrepreneurs. Me included. And I am aggressively working to solve my project management issues where this is concerned. This isn’t intentional, this is just me (and others) not wanting to turn anyone away…

4. Say NO. Sometimes you just don’t have the time or capacity to take on another project. You are better off saying NO, instead of saying YES and making existing customers wait longer as a result…

Not long ago, I waited for eight hours in an emergency room. It was painful. I sincerely don’t expect an ER visit to last 30 minutes. But, there were certainly opportunities to improve that experience.

I felt like my time wasn’t respected. That was, at least, my perception. And perception here, is important. Be sure your customers aren’t feeling that you do NOT respect their time…

Reducing wait times for your customers – OR AT LEAST communicating clearly and honestly while they wait – will go a LONG ways towards improving your customer’s experience…

What do you think? I will wait for your answer…

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[cartoon by @gapingvoid]

[UPDATE: This post was picked up by Social Media Today]

So I had yet another conversation with a gentleman about how the social web (blogging, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) just isn’t appropriate for B2B sales.

To which I replied with my standard professional, classy response to such a statement:

“Hooey.”

Let’s begin with one key assumption. I am not necessarily talking about companies like Dell that have sold seven figures worth of computers through Twitter.

I am talking about selling services, high-end consultative services, and high-price ticket orders such as manufacturing equipment and installation.

If I had a dollar for every sales guy who said “I will make no sales on Twitter,” I could retire and spend 24 hours a day blasting such characters…on Twitter.

Funny thing is, they are sort of right. And that’s WHERE they stop. And that’s WHY they stop. And that’s exactly why they WON’T ever sell anything on Twitter. Or anywhere on the social web for that matter…

Mail me one penny for every time you’ve heard this line: “The kind of people I sell to aren’t on social media.”

I hear this all the time. And while I want to get angry at these souls for feeling this way, I don’t. Because I know that they just don’t see it, just don’t believe it. Or, in many instances, aren’t willing to do the work necessary.

Many are looking for the easy way to make sales and generate revenue for the business. I hear people all the time who say they only get business from face-to-face networking or from word of mouth. But I ask, if you are legitimately getting business via these tactics, you’ve invested lots of love and care into building that referral network, yes?

It is no different on the social web. In fact, you do it to accomplish the same goals:

1. Establish trust.
2. Build relationships.
3. Demonstrate competence.
4. Educate.
5. Teach.
6. Learn.
7. Make friends.
8. Find alliance partners.
9. Find support partners.

So how do you start? How do you begin the process of building relationships?

1. Engage people on Twitter, start conversations. Here are some ways to start.
2. Use geolocation platforms such as Foursquare and Gowalla to start conversations.
3. Comment on relevant industry blog posts.
4. Listen and comment to relevant industry podcasts.
5. Monitor prospects and what they are doing/saying on Facebook. And engage.
6. Monitor prospects and see what groups they are participating in on LinkedIn. And engage.
7. Find meaningful conversations, and identify people you want to know, through strategic queries on Twitter Search.
8. Share other’s work. On whatever tool you want. By whatever means works for you.
9. Blog about your passion, your hobby (here’s mine). You will meet new people. These people could be prospects. Or know people who should be prospects.

These are just a few ideas. There are more. In fact, if you have other ideas, please share in the comments. And here’s the important piece of advice: don’t sell them.

Get to know them. Talk about music with them. Talk about sports. Where they had dinner. What books are they reading.

Talk about anything that matters to them – that isn’t BUSINESS related.

What’s going to happen?

They will learn to trust you. They will inquire about you. They will look you up online to find out more about you. You will meet up at an event somewhere and it will feel like you’ve known them for a long time. You will agree to have coffee. You will then learn ways to help them in some way perhaps. They will become, at the end of the day, your friend.

And don’t people like to do business with their friends? I’ve read that somewhere…

Before you go, remember these 7 keys to success:

1. Be consistent.
2. Be patient.
3. Be disciplined.
4. Remember that this process takes time.
5. Understand it won’t happen overnight. Or in a week. Or in a month. Probably longer.
6. Finally, recognize your competitors aren’t willing to put in that time. They spend their time making up excuses as to why this won’t work.
7. And when you win? Don’t gloat. Instead, teach others how it worked.

That’s when the book deal and speaking gigs come!

What do you think?

P.S. Important thing to remember (for those who read this far): Notice how this wasn’t a blog post about how to sell your high-end consulting services? This was a post about how to use the social web to make new friends and strengthen relationships. Once you do that, the selling is the easy part…

[photo from marfis75 on flickr]

I firmly believe that 99% of the world’s problems result from poor communication. From bad marriages, to failed politics, to international conflicts, etc. – all could be improved with better communication.

And poor communication negatively impacts your business – and your personal brand too. If you don’t take even simple steps to improve your ability to communicate – you and your business will soon become irrelevant.

So, here are some ideas, tips, and strategies to become a better communicator. This is an incomplete list. We will post more down the road. And we hope you add some more in the comments. But here is a good start:

1. Dedicate time each day to reach out to friends, clients, and prospects.

2. Write a personal note to new prospects.

3. Use your favorite RSS reader to follow different blogs each day – and comment on several.

4. Be honest.

5. Be yourself.

6. Serve others.

7. Spread value.

8. Use social media and Google news alerts to keep track of friends and clients.

9. Send handwritten thank you notes to customers.

10. Recommend valuable members of your Twitter community on #followfriday.

11. Wish friends a Happy Birthday on Facebook.

12. Answer people’s questions on LinkedIn.

13. Don’t misspell. Check your grammar.

14. Make sure your email signature has something of value in it.

15. Return phone calls promptly.

16. Don’t SPAM!

17. Don’t sell anything at a networking function. Provide value.

18. Start a conversation. It’s downhill from there!

19. Listen first.

20. Read a little each day. Being well read makes you a better conversationalist.

21. When you have an audience’s attention, don’t waste the opportunity. Take the time to prepare meaningful comments. You don’t get many chances to have a room full of people listen to you…

22. Don’t prejudge anyone. You never know what may happen with someone you say hello to, even if they don’t look like someone you would normally interact with…

23. Activate an internal social media system in your business or organization. Something like Yammer, or Ning. You’ll be surprised at how things get better by facilitating internal communications!

24. Don’t self promote.

25. Be easy to find. Nothing frustrates more when a customer can’t find you!

26. Speak and write conversationally. Technical jargon makes it hard to understand you…

27. If you take the time to prepare a meaningful presentation, record it, and share it with your community as a video or podcast.

What did we miss? We will post a second list down the road, but let us know some communication strategies that you want to see included!

Be Intrepid .