WorkTheRoom @ JD Projects

The biggest problem I have with networking is putting a name to a face. I don’t want to talk about right side – left side brains here. Just accept that I am not good at names.

My smart way to combat this is to put a picture on my business card. So, at least everybody else will find it easy to remember me!  Maybe they will follow the lead and soon I can have photos of all my contacts on the laptop to remind me what they look like.

Ok, so you need a photo. Well that has to be easy because cameras are everywhere and we all have them including in our phones etc.  I can put my digital camera on delayed shot and run of loads till I have the right ‘face’ or use the web cam.  It does not matter if the lighting on the photo is a little off, because clever software like Photoshop allows you to edit, crop and change the brightness/contrast until you have what you need. No, No, No, NO NO NO.

Please let us start again. This photo will be for people to recognise you, and if you follow my lead it will soon be on your business card, your email signature, your Facebook, LinkedIn and website profiles. So why not have a good photo taken in the first place – with proper lighting. That requires no ‘touching’ except a few re-size operations. Have the photo taken with the assistance of a professional portrait photographer. Let them concentrate on taking the photo – you on assuming the appropriate pose. You may want to really make good use of the session and take a couple of jackets. Do you want one with or without a tie? Just the head shot is great for small profile photos, but you may want a three quarter length sitting or standing pose too. So, just like a fashion model, turn up with a few things to wear.  They will run off 40-50 or more photos till you have the right look. I suggest you take them away and ask a few people’s views before you settle on ‘the one’ – Don’t forget to take note of the photographer’s recommendations too.

My last tip is that you may want to ‘practice a few expressions before you go’, because what ‘feels’ like a broad smile, may not look the same when checked in the mirror. (Maybe I should have been vainer during my formative years?)

Now, with a much better photo to work with, you can resize your picture to create all those different versions and be proud.

Most of the businesses I work with have less than 30 employees. Many will have less than five.  The perception of my company is that I am a one man band, and that is a reasonable reaction when I am the one delivering the service. However, I am lucky to have a small army of contacts to whom I can farm out web design, application development, server management etc. In fact all those technical things where I know what are required, but may not have the time to actually do the work myself.

I have split my business propositions into a number of micro sites, so each can concentrate on its own specific needs and market. You may receive an email from any of my ‘companies’. But then I get an email from inportnantlookingperson@gmail.com!

Now you may not be proud of your company web site, especially when you think I am going to point out all its failings. However, I am much more concerned if you do not use a decent email address. Why, well these are my top reasons, see what you think.

• What sort of fly-by-night person are you not to invest in a proper email address.
• Which ’student’ put together your web site and did not have the knowledge to set up your email accounts.
• Do you realise that Gmail, BTInternet and Yahoo have no decent guarantees for their service. They may loose all your emails and never really apologise.
• The big Internet companies will use anti-spam to clear out unwanted emails, to stop their systems being flooded. It is only a consequence that they will do it for you. However, you will discover that some legitimate email will fail too.
• Don’t expect too much back service to help you setup and make best use of your email.
• These mass email companies are often used by spammers, and individual servers are frequently blacklisted. So you will find the odd email never arrives.
• Trying to prove you are not spam without the option of sender protection measures on such services is pretty impossible.

So what can you do with a proper email address on your own domain?

• Use multiple addresses, like sales@, info@. Give forms on your server and online orders their own separate email addresses.
• Advertise a different email address on your web site for public use, and keep a personal email for your own messages. You can ‘see’ where people found you.
• Use SPF and Domain Keys, to stop spammers using your domain name to send spam.
• With a better reputation for your domain name you can use html and other quality email layouts without being trapped as spam.
• You can have an accounts department, and admin even though they may be the same person.
• Emails with your domain name will be more quickly identified with your company and your web site.
• If you change your internet provider, are you concerned you will loose your @btinternet email.
• You own the domain, your have the right to that email, and only you can close the account.
• If you wish to make use of Microsoft Exchange Email, Web Mail, Email to your blackberry or Iphone. You are not tied to any one email provider. You can always move your ‘email domain’ to another provider who can deliver such services.

So we face another week of networking.

It is all about seeing and being seen, to keep up the contact so you are in mind when people are looking at your services. However, do we sometime think we are becoming a slave to networking without knowing where we are going?

Well, my marketing friends will all say that nothing is really worth the effort without a measurement. The principle is simple. An Action works fails or makes little impact. Unless you know which outcome it produces, how do you know whether you should continue it?

If the action works, then we probably want to do this more. If it fails we should stop and maybe try a little refinement if we can not measure either.

Now, this article was going to be on a slightly different subject, however, as I started writing it, I found myself going in another direction. Let’s face it; we all do this all the time. Good intentions put us on one track and circumstance pushes us another way. What a cool way to prove my point.

So, before we start on a process we need to be able to give ourselves a clear action with a clear expected goal. We have to take practical steps to stay ‘on message’ or the results will be useless.  We then need to ensure that we can measure the number of actions and the number of times the goal is achieved, then at the end of the week we can tot up the results and make plans for the next week.

Good networking

I will not betray any confidence, or pre-announce any of the ideas, but…

Today I met with a handsome and intelligent young man. I knew he was an expert in his field and that I had no current need of his services.

He knew this as well, yet was happy to chat with me for a couple of hours or more. Why? – Simply because

• We were happy to bounce some ideas between us, which will certainly lead to some homework on my part. You could say that we had done the rapport and were prepared to be candid and open.
• We both wanted to know more about the other’s business because you really can not learn enough in a 10 minute slot.
• We both saw that there was good potential to sell into each others contact lists. So we look past the personality and into the contact list. What 4N describes as selling through the room, not into it. The principle that is as the core of BNI.

And so I went home with a big smile of satisfaction.

The name of this person, well I am not going to release that here, but he will be plugged elsewhere quite soon.

So, the take away nugget?
To never underestimate a contact. – Everyone has a value to you. It just may not be so obvious or so immediate.

Good networking

We are looking forward to meeting up again with business across the West Country at Network Central 09 – Take Two.

Take two, because this is the second meeting this year, following the very successful event earlier this year.

There are some 1300 business expected and up to 200 business stands will be filling the hall just off J24, Bridgewater. To increase the opportunities for business, there are four speed networking sessions during the day. So there will be plenty of chances to WorkTheRoom.

For those wanting to learn more, there are 12 seminars across two seminar rooms.

This event is a good example of networking groups working together with participation from BNI, Business Link, GWE Business West, Business Network SW, NRG networks, Business Scene, FSB, BSN, 4Networking, the business league, TBX1 and local chambers of commerce.

If you are going to the event and wish to meet up with me, then drop me an email and we can arrange a time.

The majority of Small and medium sized business owners pay external companies and consultants to design and build their web sites. This means that when they have new information which would update the web site, there is then a concern over the cost and delay in making changes to the site. The result is often that the change is never made to the site which becomes out of date and less relevant to the business.

One very easy way around this situation is the use of a Blog. – If you do not have an easy way to add news to your web site, then why not use a blog, linked to, but separate to your web site upon which you can post news and product launches.

So the first question is which blog system to use?

There are free blog sites onto which you can setup your company blog, but I would respectfully suggest that this is not good place to put your company information. You do not have guarantees of quality, control or the ability to customize.

There are also charged for blog sites onto which you can buy space, but although better, there are still many restrictions with the space, content, and layout.

We mostly host Wordpress based web sites. These use the very popular Wordpress blog format, but as we host the content, then we have total control over the system. Wordpress has many dozens of ‘plug-ins’ and pre-defined layouts available.  By hosting ourselves, we can use any of these and then change anything, and so choose exactly the layout or options, and even be able to integrate information with another web site.

We can then provide a ‘managed’ blog service, where the customer has full control and can add pages and blog items where and when they want to, but we retain a login to help with system updates and installing any widgets or plug-in to deliver more features to your customers.

Such added value items often include

• Anti-Spam monitoring of comments added
• Pages that are Search Engine Friendly
• Ability to Tweet announcements of new posts
• Create Google Analytics monitoring of the blog
• Add videos from U-tube or upload your own

In the perfect world we would give each customer their own server. However, 12,000 pounds of hardware and software for each customer is not really justified, anyhow you would need a lot of visitors to make such a server sweat.

Well, there is a new technology that you may have heard about called virtualisation. The principle behind this is that you setup multiple virtual servers on a single physical server. They each have their own private hard disk and ram chips allocated. The web server, mail server and the new Adobe 9 ColdFusion application think they have the server to themselves. Actually they do not, but in this private world we have full control without interfering with any other users.

So you share the hardware, the costs of the software, and keep the resources dedicated to you.

Also, we can provide our Upgraded SmarterWeb software tools in one please, which makes it easier, quicker and more efficient for us to develop, yet every customer sees their own private version!

So what does this all mean to our customers in the real world? Quite simply, we will be able to deliver all features and applications to all customers in one go. Web, email, shopping cart, newsletter marketing, blog, web chat and more new applications to be announced shortly, will all be available. Now you can pay for the amount of use you make of our applications rather than just paying for them to be there.

Previously you would need to purchase each of these from a number of suppliers and then try and link them together. Now we are providing them in one place! If you do not find this exciting yet, then I hope the examples of how it is used over the next few months will tempt you.

The best recommendation I can give so far is that we have already been approached by three marketing companies who are interested in licensing our systems for their own clients.

Among the networking events I am attending this week, I would like to bring your attention to the one of Thursday evening.

This is hosted by James, from Best of Bath. It is a great venue with even greater nibbles, so if you can arrange not to drive – even better! This is a chance to meet with local business people in a relaxed environment, to find new suppliers, to discover new opportunities and contacts, and not forgetting to make new friends.

If you live in Bath, then Queens Square should be a short walk, or bus ride. If you live outside Bath, then I suggest you take advantage of the lower parking rates in the evening, or do what I do, which is to go in early and then catch up on a few Bath customers and check out some shops!

If you can not attend, then I still suggest you look for a bestof.co.uk group in your area. It is a franchise operation with each person buying the bestof for one or even more towns.

This is a good example of a business that seems to start as a simple web listing site for local business in a town and then expands into a more interactive marketing service for business in that area.  The quality of each group will depend on the person running it, but I have yet to hear of a bad group.

So thanks in advance to INIGO for the venue, HYDROMEL EVENTS for the nibbles and drinks and to James for inviting me. Hope to see you there too. If you think you miss out on business networking because you can not rise early enough for breakfast, here is a 6.30pm appointment not to miss.

Lastly, I hear a few of your thinking, but John, we are not good at this networking thing. Please help us. My answer to you is that I have just setup a new web site called WorktheRoom.co.uk and it will be live this Monday. You will find information on how to make such events enjoyable, easy and effective.

We are using two contact management applications within JD Projects, yes two. Why, well because neither work as well as we would like and both need some custom changes.

You see, Work the Room gives me some new contact management challenges.

• I want to be able to track who I meet and at which event.
• Can I track if I spoke about a subject or just passed the time of day?
• I want to track if a person was at an event even if i did not meet them.
• I want to be able to search by networking group
• Was person A at meeting B on date C?
• Can I seperate the follow up to those i have a spcific reason and those I am being polite to?

I am amazed that nobody has covered this market and I already have to programmers looking into a simple work the room contact manager.

However, before I sign that Paypal request, (yes cheque is so yesterday), does anybody know of a credibly solution?

As swine flu numbers reduce, it is time to think about the impact on your business this time round.

The schools are going back in the next two weeks, so there may be some fall out from that, but otherwise we are going to be ok till the winter flu period.

Can senior staff work from home and still be valuable?  Would they be able to use the company email and what about phone calls?

What happens if key personnel are unable to make it to the office. Who does the data backups for instance?

Remember: Failure to Plan is planning to fail.