| Special Edition | The Networking Edge | May 17, 2006 |
| The Latest News, Tools and Tips For Your Professional Networking Needs
In this issue:
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Ecademy Appoints Ron Bates as US Country Manager LONDON, UK -- We are delighted to share with you news of our recent appointment of Ron Bates as Ecademy's US Country Manager. Ron Bates is a retained executive search, coaching and placement consultant and co-founder of Executive Advantage Group, Inc., a successful retained executive search business with offices in Silicon Valley and the Pacific Northwest, and more importantly has been a compulsive networker for most of his professional life. In addition to spending the better part of two decades in various engineering, sales, and sales executive roles at Fortune 50 companies, prior to his current firm Ron was a Partner in one of the largest retained executive search firms in the World. In the course of over two decades, he has had the opportunity to work for and provide service to many Fortune 100 technology companies and pre-IPO Venture Capital funded businesses so his business experience speaks for itself. So why did we choose Ron out of all the highly successful business men and women here in Ecademy? Ron not only possesses the inherent understanding of the importance of networking, he combines this with running a successful business where networking is an integral part of his daily business activities. Though he does have a substantial network, without understanding how to use it in the business world, he knows on its own it is of little value. It is the manner with Ron has so successfully combined the two that is not common to everyone and Ron can help you master that. The Ecademy management recognise that this mindset towards effective networking undertaken by Ron is a natural quality required for being an effective US Country Manager and which we believe will help generate the right interest from you all and having a US Country Manager with the right perspective and balance towards Networking whilst also either running your own business or following your particular career path is what sets Ron apart from the rest. Ron will be working closely with the Ecademy management to develop an infrastructure in as many cities around the States where Ecademists can share local knowledge and contacts with one another at club events run by those wishing to raise their visibility of themselves and their services as club leaders. This activity will also create greater personal brand awareness and attract business towards them but in a social environment. So any of you in the US with aspirations of this nature, you know who to contact. Please do connect with Ron Bates and welcome him; I know he is very excited about the role and will I know help grow the US membership to a much bigger number and with it, provide many more opportunities for you all to connect with those in the US and grow their personal network. Explore a complimentary one month PowerNetworker subscription at Ecademy and explore the site with full privileges (just enter the subscription promo code ERX13 when registering) . The PowerNetwork annual subscription now included an additional -3- months of membership as well. You'll be amazed at what you can accomplish on www.Ecademy.com after you become an Ecademy member. What's in Your Networking Toolbox? SAN JOSE, CA -- Are you stuck trying to accomplish your networking/visibility objectives by simply using one networking site? Are the people you're trying to connect with even in the site(s) you belong to? Networking isn't just about "networking sites". Picking up the phone, or sending someone a direct email also counts! Networking sites can help you identify people you are attempting to connect with and/or network through, but that isn't the only source of information for identifying people. Jump on the Internet and identify database resources that can help you identify the people you are trying to connect with and/or network through. Not all database resources are subscription based. Some are free -and- industry specific (e.g., www.MediaPost.com). Even some of the subscription based resources have free trial/demo periods or access to free information that is enough to point you in the right direction. You can access a heck of a lot of extremely valuable information during a free trial period on a high end subscription database. Depending on the investment you are able to make, it might actually be worth it to you to subscribe to an on-line database service. If you compare the ROI associated with successfully closing that deal you're working on or finding that ideal job through your networking efforts with the cost of membership in a subscription based on-line database service - it might just be a no brainer. Some of the top on-line subscription database sites are: www.hoovers.com Is it time to add to your networking toolbox? Is Your Networking Profile Useless? SAN JOSE, CA -- It can be incredibly useful in furthering your objectives of Building a Personal Internet Presence to create a content rich profile on one or more networking platforms (e.g., "Ecademy Profile: John Doe"or "LinkedIn Profile: John Doe") that search engines index and rank high in search returns. Uh - or not. It's another thing for people to know this search engine return hit actually refers to - you - (i.e., it's - your - profile) as opposed to the millions of other John Doe related documents the search engine indexes. Ecademy is - extremely powerful - as compared to other networking platforms in this regard. There are some very simply, non-technical, things you can do to optimizing your Ecademy Profile for search engines that will make a strong connection between - you - and your Ecademy Profile. All search engines display the actual "hit" text differently. Search on my name - ron bates - (or just click the screen shot links I've provided here) in Google, MSN, and Yahoo, and take note of what each search engine displays as the "hit text" for Ecademy Profile: Ron Bates. You'll notice that each search engine displays different "hit" text. Yahoo for example displays the first part of your 50 words. That's why I put "Ron Bates - Expert in Mission Critical Retained Search" as the first "word" of my 50 words in my Ecademy Profile. Why would I care about this? Just because - I - make the mental connection that Ecademy Profile: Ron Bates actually is referring to me, it doesn't mean other people will know that the - Ron Bates - this hit refers to is actually - me - as opposed to the 1,800,000 other - Ron Bates - hits in Yahoo, the 419,898 hits in MSN, or the 5,030,000 hits in Google. I want a document that returns high in search engines to be useful to me, not useless, in the context of Building a Personal Internet Presence. This is - extremely - useful:. Ecademy Profile: Ron Bates This is useless: LinkedIn: Ron Bates With over 25,000 direct contacts, I'm the most connected person in the world on www.LinkedIn.com, but I'm invisible on the Internet as far as my LinkedIn profile is concerned. Google (which is the first search engine an Ecademy Profile typically starts to rank high in) displays the first few lines of the text portion of your profile, as does MSN, but Yahoo actually displays the first part of your 50 words. It can take about 3-4 weeks typically depending on the spider cycle of the search engine to pick up any changes you make, cache them, and have them actually display in the "hit text", so be patient. You can obviously leverage this in different ways depending on the objectives behind your profile. If you want to be found by recruiters for example, you might consider using a few "key words" in in the right places in your profile such as: "Resume - VP Operations", "Semiconductor Industry", "Texas Instruments", etc. By doing this in key locations within your profile, search engines will index and cache and show this information in the actual "hit text" that is displayed. I'm not a search engine optimization expert by any means. I do know these simple changes in your Ecademy Profile dramatically increase the value of actually having your Ecademy Profile rank high in search engine returns and further your objectives of Building a Personal Internet Presence. Explore a complimentary one month PowerNetworker subscription at Ecademy and explore the site with full privileges (just enter the subscription promo code ERX13 when registering) . The PowerNetwork annual subscription now included an additional -3- months of membership as well. You'll be amazed at what you can accomplish on www.Ecademy.com after you become an Ecademy member. The Death of Cold Calling SAN JOSE, CA -- I saw an advertisement for a sales training course recently stating boldly that in the new information age - cold calling is dead. I don't think so. Anyone that thinks "cold calling" as a business tool is dead is only trying to sell you an alternative way to - cold call. The Internet has made cold calling more challenging, that is for certain, but it is far from being dead as a way to engage a prospect. When I was a sales executive I used to ask sales reps the following question: "Do you like prospecting?" There are two kinds of sales reps: Those that hate cold call prospecting, and liars. Prospecting is a critical sales skill. This is also a foundation skill critical for networking. Can you reach out to someone you don't know - proactively? Cold calling is -not- about being able to pick up the phone and mindlessly start "dialing for dollars". Cold calling doesn't even have to involve a phone, letter, email or fax. Cold calling is not "a numbers game". Cold calling is about one thing: gaining access to a targeted individual. You can strive to be 100% effective in your cold calling efforts. With out exception, anyone successful in selling or networking is adept at cold calling. Whether you're approaching someone as part of a sales process, job search campaign, or you're simply trying to develop a critical networking contact, the key to successful cold calling is to do everything you can to turn the "cold" call into a "warm" call before you make the call. You want to be able to do the same thing when making contact for the first time with someone you want to network with. How do you do this? It's really simple. Do your homework. What does that mean? Find out everything you can about the individual you are attempting to prospect (or network) with before attempting contact. Understand their current business situation in as much detail as you can get your hands on (e.g., market, competitor, technology, product, finance issues/challenges and associated critical success factors, etc.), and if it applies, relevant personal details as well (e.g., you both go to the same church, his kids play soccer too, your spouses went to the same school, you both like skeet shooting, etc.). A master at this is Harvey Mackay, author of Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive : Outsell, Outmanage, Outmotivate, and Outnegotiate Your Competition Harvey Mackay epitomizes the concept of knowing your prospect with his 66-question customer profile. How do you find out all of this information? The Internet is a good place to start. You can identify a ton of current business intelligence via the Internet. Even better, you can discover most of this information, and the most important aspects of this information by -networking- with people that know the individual you want to approach! Hey, one of those individuals might even provide you with an introduction to the individual you are targeting. Prospecting is a skill-set (emphasis on the word "set"). This implies there are different tools to leverage, which in turn implies that there are proficiency levels associated with the various tools. Read as many books on Cold Calling and Prospecting as you can stand. Why? Because not all techniques work in all situations, and you want the techniques to become integrated into your personal style of communicating - not change your style of communication to conform to one technique. At a minimum read: The Power to Get In: A step-by-Step System to Get in Anyone's Door So you Have the Chance to…Make the Sale…Get the Job… Present Your Ideas - by Michael A. Boylan and Selling To VITO (The Very Important Top Officer) by Anthony Parinello These are without a doubt the best two books I've ever come across for how to approach new prospects in a deliberate targeted way. These principles can be extended to many forms of cold calling and prospecting, and they can most certainly be extended to cover networking objectives. But don't stop with these two. There are many, many, more worth reading. The key to getting good at cold calling - is to do it. The additional success you realize will take the sting out of the process. When is Networking Selling? PORTLAND, OR -- When is networking selling? All the time? Never? It depends? Some might think that this depends on what you mean by "selling". There certainly are different approaches and styles of selling - such as "consultative" selling, which focuses more on someone's needs and how your offering's value proposition maps into their need-set - versus - "transactional" selling, which focuses more on your offering's bells & whistles being better than the competition's. There are certainly different sales cycles as well as far as the time it takes to "close" a deal, and they can range from seconds to years. Some people think selling is a word with a negative connotation (e.g., "used car salesman"). The fact is we all are unconsciously and consciously attempting to sell our ideas, perspectives, positions, or concepts every day when we engage in conversation. Selling can be as simple (or complex) as attempting to communicate a point of view in a way that attempts to precipitates agreement. It can be as simple (or complex) as convincing someone to take action. It can be attempting to capture a moment of another individual's time for the purpose of learning some of their "best practices". It can be when an unsolicited candidate is attempting to get time from an executive recruiter to discuss his/her career. It can simply be attempting to find out who or what someone knows in hopes this might be knowledge you can leverage at some future date (e.g., at a "networking event"). What many people either don't realize - or forget (including those that come from a sales background) is that an alarm goes off in someone's head when they are being sold to. The alarm that typically goes off in someone's head is: "What's in it for me?" If you keep this in mind when you are networking, you are much more likely to give the impression you are open to and care about the individual's needs you are trying to network with and not solely focused on your own - regardless - of your actual ability to address their needs. As a result, you might find more doors are left open to you that you'll be able to walk through at some point in the future. Just remember, it is easy to get a meeting with an executive. The challenge is to get invited back. | ||||||||||
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