I like to teach classes and seminars but speaking at industry functions is a struggle for me. Sometimes you get a tough crowd. Other self-proclaimed experts make me nervous as do those who seem to be too eagerly lapping up what I’m saying. It has made me a much better listener and attendee to other people’s presentations though. So in the hopes that my efforts to be good to my fellow presenters will bring me good listeners in October, I am sharing  a few ways I think attendees can help a speaker during a presentation and I’m praying my audience is full of these types in October.

Smile at the Presenter and Look Interested
If I’m feeling a bit unsure of my audience when I’m presenting I always choose a friendly face in the crowd to talk to until I’m back in the groove. I now try to be that friendly face while attending seminars and conferences. I try not to spend too much time staring at the list I may be making or the doodles I’m drawing even if I have no interest in the speaker at all. Surveying  your audience and finding everyone looking down, writing (when you know you haven’t just said something brilliant), and talking to the person beside them is just demoralizing for a speaker. Try to appear attentive and not unhappy.

Ask Questions or Give Examples if Asked
Most presenters will ask questions at various points during a presentation. This helps them engage the audience and make sure that they’re talking about what the attendees want to hear. As a speaker it is especially difficult to ask for anyone to share an example of what you’re describing or to ask a question and to have absolutely no audience feedback.  Try to step up and help your presenter out if no one else is interacting with them, it really makes a difference. Usually once the first audience member has participated, others will follow.

Attend The Right Sessions
Sounds simple but sometimes attendees see the title of a presentation but don’t read the description or the objectives. Then they’re bored or give the speaker a bad grade on the surveys. I believe in helping speakers by being honest about their presentations but don’t blame them if you went to an entry level presentation and were bored. Which leads me to…

Fill Out the Survey Form
Each event I have participated in as a presenter has provided survey forms to the attendees following my presentation. They are always less than 10 questions and can be completed in a few minutes.  Please fill them out and be constructive if you need to criticize. Honing the speaker craft is a tricky undertaking and having useful feedback is extremely valuable.

If You’re Bored to Death
If you’re in a session and you think that it’s the worst thing you’ve ever heard at least try to get one good nugget from it. As my grandmother said,  “Even a broken clock is right twice a day”.  You can learn something from everyone. If a speaker seems to be drifting from the topic, politely ask a question to get them back on. Make it a point to try to learn if you’re there already right?

It takes a special person to stand, smile, and greet everyone that walks by at a tradeshow. I personally have met these people and I have met others who were the worst possible choice to work out of a booth. As an exhibits director, I have seen firsthand the impact of sending the right and wrong person to a specific tradeshow.  Why would a company wishing to promote their products waste money and effort by failing to select someone who was the right fit for a particular show? Choosing the right person means several things.

1-Choose a person whose knowledge of the product/service is compatible with the company’s objective for the show.

Some exhibitors attend tradeshows as a living advertisement for the organization. They aren’t there to necessarily sell a particular product or service, but rather to be seen and to not be conspicuously absent.  Others are there to show support to the audience of attendees. Still others are trying to sell or gather feedback on a particular product/service from the attendees. There are many other valid and valuable reasons for attending a tradeshow and most companies have more than one. But it is vitally important to send someone capable of fulfilling your company’s objectives at each show. General marketing, support and presence booths can be staffed by most anyone in the organization. The mission here isn’t to drag people in and count conversations or contacts. Most anyone employed by a company should be able to stand in a booth, smile, and answer simply general questions.

Technical support and customer service personnel make great booth staffers at a show focusing on a particular product or service or where customer interaction about the products themselves is key.  These folks are able to answer specific product related questions, offer tips and advice to those who stop by the booth (a definite way to build customer loyalty) and support any sales questions with helpful user stats and examples.

Salespeople are a good fit at a show where the objective is simply to talk to as many current customers and find suspects to work on in the future. Your salespeople should be the most outgoing, the most personable and the most eager to talk to anyone possible for your booth.

2-Choose Someone Who Understands the Marketing Power of a Booth

If my first week on the job as an exhibits director didn’t consist of being an actual exhibitor at a tradeshow I never would have known the view from inside of the booth: tired feet, exhausted brain, jet lag, missing booth literature, missing parts for booth set-up, issues at home, no luggage,  and more inconveniences.  Nevertheless then, and at any event I have exhibited at since I choose never to arrive at my booth with an attitude that reflected my issues because I knew that I was not just representing myself, I was representing my entire company.  A booth is a portable storefront. The image your booth creates in the mind of an attendee at very first glance is the impression they will have of your whole operation. Is the equipment and collateral displayed in an attractive and accessible way that furthers the brand? Do your booth personnel know what the standard ‘company line’ is for anyone who approaches? These are important things to make standard for anyone attending a tradeshow as a booth staffer.

Send Someone Who Wants to Be There

The one individual that has the ability to make a show successful is always the one standing inside of the booth. Having a grumpy or unknowledgeable person standing in your booth representing your entire company is not a great idea. Make sure that the person who arranged your company’s participation passed all of the necessary information to the people working at the show.  Review the upcoming event with the personnel prior to the show to make sure expectations are reasonable and a plan for measuring success is in place. And make sure that the person/people you send want to represent your company!

More Proof That Johnny Carson Was Brilliant

I’m a member of an industry message board/listserve that is fairly active.  I rarely comment and don’t even check the messages daily but  several weeks ago I did and someone had posted this great quote attributed to Johnny Carson, “My success just evolved from working hard at the business at hand each day.” Wow.  How simple is that?

Three things in that one quote are just genius :  He worked hard, he worked hard every single day, and he worked at the business at hand each day.There is a manual for success wrapped up in that one sentence. This is what I learned from that quote that I’m trying to apply to my own business life in my success quest.

The first and most obvious thing that jumps out at me is that he worked hard.  He didn’t say he worked hard until he got famous or that he worked hard and took long vacations. He worked hard. Working hard isn’t working until you sweat or until you’re in a frenzy. Working hard is working smart. It’s persevering when you face challenges, working to fix problems that are standing in the way of productivity, and always keeping your goals clearly defined so that all of your actions are movements toward them. I now evaluate my work situation weekly. What challenges have I let take the wind out of my sails, what processes could I streamline and what have I accomplished that is tangible and quantifiable?  This is how I make sure I’m working hard and smart.

The second thing that struck me was what Carson said he worked on. He didn’t say he pursued a crazy idea every day. He didn’t say he relished his job as boss and delegated and passively managed things all day long. He very pointedly said that he worked hard at the business at hand. Sometimes this can be a real struggle for an entrepreneur. Many (personally I’d say most) entrepreneurs are risk takers and challenge seekers.  Read that as people who have the attention span of a gnat and spend a great deal of their lives having great ideas about the next big thing. For me it is probably the single biggest challenge I face. Often the business at hand isn’t fun. Often it is boring and sometimes downright unpleasant. I own a business with a small group of people. We don’t all have personal assistants and more often than not I’m doing my own filing and typing. But that is the business at hand. And I have seen that nothing big can happen if you aren’t taking care of every little detail. So I make a list every day and I’ve learned how to sync my tasks on my blackberry and my desktop. I make sure every single day that I am taking care of the business at hand so the future takes care of itself (to some degree).

Lastly he said that he took care of the business at hand each day. He didn’t say on the days he felt like it or on the days that he wasn’t on vacation. He said he worked hard each day. I’ve always been a hard worker and as a professional who has a commute-free office, I work harder and more than I ever did at an office for someone else.  But I realized I wasn’t always working the same each day.  Between my short attention span and my lack of a time clock I was always working some days much harder/longer/productively than others. Consistency is key to success and I didn’t always understand that. In the few weeks as I’ve been working on changing my habits I’ve found that working at a steady pace each day, on a consistent list of evenly distributed priorities is far more productive for me personally than working several 15 hour days like a fiend and then just being bored of it for the day after.

I’ve made a schedule, I keep a goal for each day and I make sure that I keep myself from daydreaming too much about the next big project instead of really consistently relishing the details of the business at hand.

What do you think of the success manual masquerading as a simple quote? How have you recognized or incorporated these principles in your own professional life?

Malcom Gladwell’s gargantuan bestseller The Tipping Point is a wonderful read and in his discussion’s about social interaction and influence he introduces the notion of three main types of people that make things happen: Mavens, Connectors, and Salesmen.  I agree a thousand times over with most every premise in the book but most definitely in the understanding that having a personal/professional network inclusive of these people makes all of the difference in the world between success or failure. It most certainly has been illustrated for us in this current launch.

I think I am more of a salesmen type-not the genius who interprets body language and hypnotizes people with my mere presence-the kind who likes to persuade people to agree with me, or more importantly want to participate in and assist the success of my projects. I also try to serve as a connector whenever possible. If you haven’t read the book I highly recommend it.

For this project my colleagues and I took a look at all the folks that were friends or at least friendly acquaintances (our network) with connections of any kind in the project niche.  We also looked at peripheral networks we might have such as Linkedin groups, our corporate twitter accounts, or professional association memberships we possessed. We each were tasked with talking to each of those in our ‘network’ about what we were doing and how we needed assistance.  We also developed the philanthropic aspects of our project so those we approached could help from a purely charitable standpoint if nothing else. We then set out to spread the good word. Those we knew were the more valuable connectors and also those we knew the best, we met with in person when possible.  The others we called, emailed or a combination of both.

Within a day we knew that one particular friendly acquaintance ‘Bill’ was golden for us.  There are three reason he and any golden network member has such impact.  First ‘Bill’ is a connector to his very core…he knows everyone and practices connecting.  Secondly, we had worked with him on a project near to his heart in the past and done it well so he had confidence in working with us. Lastly he liked us and people like him…in a personal connection kind of way, and we all like him. Bill  is the perfect connector to make sure you have in your network:someone who connects as habit, someone who believes in you and what you’re doing, and someone for whom others have affection and a desire to help

Because of just two key introductions he made on our behalf, we were able to accomplish 80% of the groundwork in record time.  But he didn’t just introduce us to two good people, he made sure to introduce us to two people just like him. Two people who loved to connect, who were familiar with our company’s work on something they held dear AND who liked Bill…so their affection/respect for him was transferred to us by the virtue of his personal introduction.  That is how it happens when it all goes right.

Take some time to look at your network.  Remember to include not just your obvious close associates but to be mindful of indirect connections through social media, trade organizations, high school alums, etc that can be effective.  Identify which folks within those networks are best suited for the task you have to accomplish.  A connector is what I needed because our projects require lots of marketing and attendee support.  Perhaps you don’t have a salesman on board for your particular project and need one.  Matching your network resource to the need is crucial.

Don’t be afraid to reach out to them once you’ve identified them. Make sure that you have support materials that can be used when you call, email, or visit your network. Depending on your project or need this can be a simple tag line or a complex brochure. Give your connection or salesperson all the info they need to connect or sell on your behalf.

If you realize that you don’t have much of a network or that you haven’t examined the one you have then take a day or two to make a network plan. First make a list of the folks you do know, those you’ve worked on project with in the past who are happy, those who you’ve helped out, or those you admire.  All great people to list.  Next make a list of your indirect or possibly network influencers…this is your Linkedin profile, your Linkedin groups, your association contacts, and your prospects that didn’t come to fruition but who you still met/know have some connection to your project subject matter. You will probably start to realize that you have more of a network than you realize.

If you don’t have a list that is longer than you thought it would be, then you need a plan to cultivate a network. It isn’t extremely difficult but it does take some time. I’ll include more information on building a network in subsequent posts.

How has networking or activating your network proven successful for you?

1. Sell new products/services to new clients
2. Sell new products/services to existing clients
3. Sell existing products/services to new clients
4. Sell existing products/services to existing clients

That’s it. If you can simultaneously manage them all, then you’re super-successful. Most of us are really good at one or two at time but mastering them all at once is the key to a thriving growing business.

Sounds simple doesn’t it? Four easy rules and that’s it. But it is difficult to do and as a business owner and sales/marketing person, I often analyze why. Here’s why I think it is hard to maintain a perfectly consistent pace in all four areas and what we strive to do to inch closer to accomplishing it.

1 – ‘New’ anything is the shiniest, coolest, most fun.

Whether it is launching a new event or working with a new client, new always seems better.  We all gravitate toward the most exciting and fun part of our job and the vast majority of entrepreneurs have that passion for the next new thing.  It is important to try to have a staff that consists of new shiny-object followers AND those who like to tend and grow and to match the personality to the job that best suits it.   At Lodestar we work on this by shaking up the lead on projects as they age. This gives the person at the helm of that project the chance for something ‘new’ while maintaining the organizational support and history necessary. So while the experienced ‘launchers’ work on the parts of the ‘new’ best suited to their desires and skills, everyone eventually has some experience in a start-up process on some level to understand the company and our projects as a whole. Try that if you need to make older work fresh.

2 – Existing clients have existing issues

Most every business tries to under-promise and over-deliver but even the most carefully crafted events or projects seem to have one or two people or groups who just can’t be made happy. If you are the existing customer’s representative, despite your best intentions you approach the thought of trying to upsell those clients with a bit of trepidation. A combination of intimidation and dread accompanies the dialing of their number or the typing of their email. This is a natural human response but a killer to selling existing or new services to existing clients. One approach is to be selective about whom you approach and make darn sure that the product or service matches the client. Try to approach them with the thought that you aren’t trying to sell them anything, that you’re providing them information that could be beneficial to them. Sending out information about upcoming events, new opportunities for sponsorship and/or early-bird sales to your existing clients a week before you make them public also helps the client feel he is special. Reaching out to an existing client with information FIRST or a deal makes the exchange valuable, timely and a courtesy.

I’ll examine each of these four rules of increasing business individually over the next few weeks.  At the end of the day, every action you and your staff takes should be toward one of these four points or in support of a newly cemented action on one of them.