Job search recommendation: Steve Sherlock

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Sep 6, 2010 in Conferences, Productivity | 2 comments

As I wrote on the Blue Sky Factory blog today, it’s Labor Day, a great opportunity to not only celebrate friends and family, but to also take a few minutes to help out someone you know who is looking for work. These days, with the unemployment rate knocking on the 10% door (and underemployment significantly higher), there are plenty of people who are exceptionally talented but can’t find a place to call home. It’s not the scrubs or the lazy that can’t find a job – it’s millions of people.

So to do my part, which is a bit more than 5 minutes, I want to take a few moments to tell you about someone I’ve had a chance to work with in a volunteer capacity for years upon years now, a guy most known for two things: his reliability and his hat.

Photo Credit: Whitney Hoffman

Enter Steve Sherlock, of Franklin, Massachusetts. Former director of project management for some of the largest corporations in New England (Fidelity and Unisys), he’s been a reliable face at PodCamp Boston nearly since its inception. While I never worked with Steve at Fidelity or Unisys, I’ve worked with him at nearly every xCamp in New England that he’s been a part of. If you’ve been to a PodCamp and seen this hat, you’ve seen Steve.

He’s a master of his trade, which unfortunately is supremely unsexy: making things happen, getting things done. While most volunteer events would be lucky to be able to find their own bottoms with two hands, a flashlight, and a team of five, it’s folks like Steve, coordinating organizer conference calls, transcribing meeting notes, coordinating teams of volunteers at events, and working in the trenches on game day that make things happen. And this is on a volunteer basis, with no pay, no compensation, no reward except to see an event you care about happen smoothly. Imagine what he’s capable of for things that actually matter, like your business.

Here’s the part where you come in.

I know Steve’s hitting all the channels – he’s on LinkedIn, Twitter, his own blog, etc. But in this economy, that’s not enough. I’d like your help in helping him find a Boston-area company that is desperately starving for good operations and project management on an ongoing basis, a company that currently lacks reliability internally and needs a rock to build on.

Help me connect Steve with that company in and around the Greater Boston area. If you’ve worked with Steve in the past (and many of you have), please forward his profile to the hiring managers you know. If you’re a hiring manager, take a careful read of his recommendations, because you’ll notice a consistent theme: not just smart, but rock-solid reliable, a rare trait these days.

Who will you help on Labor Day?

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5 old sales tricks made new again

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Jul 28, 2010 in On ko chi shin, Productivity, Sales | 11 comments

5 old sales tricks made new again

Anyone ever take one of the old sales trainings from back in the day – Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins, etc.? There were tons of interesting tips and tricks for sales folks from a time when sales people had to work insanely hard with terrible tools (or no tools at all) and still make their numbers. No Salesforce.com or Zoho CRM to remind you who you forgot to call, no social media or SEO to bring prospects to your door, nothing but your leather binder, day planner, telephone, and a suit & tie.

Some of the tricks from those old trainings can be modernized, though, and some can be brought back as huge differentiators in the digital world. Here’s a few:

1. Thank you cards. This is something Ziglar was absolutely punishing on. You had to send thank you cards. No surprise, in the age of electronic automation of everything, a handwritten thank you card to a closed sale makes a huge impression because it’s so out of the ordinary.

2. Thinking about you. Want to know a really silly simple trick to stay top of mind with someone you’re trying to win over? Set up a Google alert for their top SEO term (check their web site, and if it looks like they have no SEO, take your best guess) and then when news articles and alerts pop up in Alerts, check them for quality and forward them. Back in the day, Hopkins would recommend taking the local newspaper and sending clippings to prospects. Google Alerts and Google Reader make that much, much simpler.

3. Thinking about you part 2. “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” -Dale Carnegie. Monitor your best prospects and their company names and send them stuff about them as you can. There are actually paid services that do nothing but clip stuff out of papers and magazines and try to resell it to you at obscene prices, especially after you’ve won an award. “Wouldn’t you like a nicely framed version of your article?” crap. Do it yourself for your best prospects. If there’s someone you want to blow away, frame it yourself and send it over for free. For everyone else, send them at least an electronic “clipping”.

4. Fedex to the door. Email gets filtered. Postal mail gets shredded. Shipped boxes tend to get delivered and opened in case there’s something important inside. Got someone (Fortune 500 CEO, etc.) that you absolutely positively have to reach? Pay the $10 or so to ship a letter, CD, DVD, etc. via Fedex. Obviously, you’d only do this for a shot at a huge deal, but what a shot it makes.

5. Flip cam, iPhone cam, webcam. Back in the day, Hopkins would recommend trying to record yourself on the phone in a very awkward manner by holding a giant tape recorder (does anyone even remember those) up while you spoke so that you could listen to yourself on a call. These days, recording technology is incredible. Make use of it. Set up a little Flip cam, phone camera, whatever you’ve got that can record audio and video, then watch and listen to yourself on the phone. This is killer for public speakers too – don’t record just yourself! If budget and venue permit, record your audience and watch how they react. If you call using services and software like Skype, you can record both sides of the conversation (make sure you notify the person you’re talking to as it’s illegal to do so otherwise in some states).

There’s no shortage of old ideas that can be made new again if you’re willing to do some creative thinking and apply them to the best practices of yesteryear for results today. As my teacher Mark Davis of the Boston Martial Arts Center says, “on ko chi shin” – study something old to learn something new.

Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com! Want to take your conference or event to the next level? Book me to speak and get the same quality information on stage as you do on this blog.

iPhone 4 and iOS 4 for the sales and marketing nerd

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Jun 7, 2010 in Marketing, Productivity, Sales, Technology | 5 comments

A few quick takeaways from the WWDC keynote address, in which Steve Jobs asks you to spend more of your money on Apple products.

Image courtesy of Engadget

FaceTime video calls: very slick. The stealth winner in this is if you and your customer both have iPhone 4 units. Very few people are capable of screencasting, not because they lack the technology but just because it’s intimidating. Now imagine your customer service representatives being able to call a customer and if the customer has the capability, just tell them to turn on the video camera so that support can see what the customer sees. This won’t be a huge game-changer immediately as the iPhone 4 has zero market penetration, but start thinking down the road a few years when video calling is ubiquitous.

FaceTime has some potential as a sales tool as well, though I’d foresee greater use for sales managers and their remote sales teams than for salesperson to customer communications. For doing demos of products, however, there’s potential if the customer simply can’t make an appointment in person – or a sales person is trapped on the road in some forsaken airport.

iAds: another way to reach the consumer. I’d expect to see all App Store apps start running these ads very quickly as developers can find another way to monetize their work. Depending on how well Apple can segment audiences for applications, some verticals will be able to microtarget their audiences very quickly. Good stuff for advertisers and developers, but consumers are about to get a flood of more ads.

Image courtesy of Engadget

iBooks and PDF support: This is the dark horse of the day. Native, simple built in PDF support with synchronization from desktop to mobile units and back, all free. You know all those sales and marketing eBooks you’ve been writing in PDF format? You know all that work you’ve put into them? Get ready to make greater use of that content. The super-stealth play here is in email marketing of PDFs. iBooks will seize a PDF from email and load it into your bookshelf for viewing, bookmarking, and synchronization without the end user having to do very much at all. With permission of your subscribers, you can now ship PDFs that will get stored in a bookshelf for iOS users.

So what? For the mobile road warriors, especially in B2B, how many times have you been stuck in an airport/airplane/somewhere with limited signal and absolutely nothing to do? Now suppose you just jumped into your bookshelf on your iPhone or iPad to pass the time while waiting for the mass transit system of your choice to un-screw itself. What will be in your bookshelf? Probably a few books, probably some random manual… and someone’s sales or marketing eBook, if they did a good job of getting it to you. When the choices of reading are the ingredients on your airport meal or a marketing PDF, chances are you’ll take the marketing PDF.

There’s a small gotcha for content creators: with the newer screen technologies, you can’t make crappy, sub-standard PDFs and expect no one to notice. Near-print quality screens on the new devices will show glaring imperfections, especially in graphics and photos, so be ready to recut your existing PDFs to a notch higher in quality.

None of these features is completely revolutionary – Skype video and iChat video on the desktop have been around for years, PDF viewing capability has been on most of these devices via an app or two, and AdMob was doing mobile ads. The difference will be that these features will ship with the units themselves, requiring no additional user intervention – and thus drastically expanding their reach.

What were some of your sales and marketing takeaways from the new iPhone 4 and iOS announcements?

Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com! Want to take your conference or event to the next level? Book me to speak and get the same quality information on stage as you do on this blog.

Attention to detail

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Apr 18, 2010 in Awakening, Productivity | 3 comments

I was traveling around Northrend the other day, looking for zombies to send to Amber Naslund for her Social Fresh St. Louis keynote – after all, there’s no place to find zombies like the Lich King’s backyard. On one of my stops at the Shadow Vault, I took the time to look at The Leaper, a (now) friendly geist hanging out along with Vile, the giant wandering abomination.

I noticed for the first time just how detailed The Leaper is. A large skeletal zombie of sorts with a single eye and a hangman’s noose around his neck, he’s the epitome of creepy – and even though I’d spent more than a few hours looking at him and his friends while finishing quests at the Shadow Vault, I’d never really noticed how detailed he was.

Attention to detail is one of those skills that we often are forced to develop in the workplace, and as a result, the skill is developed reactively, with only punitive feedback received for insufficient skill. We’re very rarely rewarded for its use and only punished for a lack of it. As a result, many of us – myself included – rarely make use of it outside of workplace routines to its fullest potential, and miss out on some of the enjoyment of our leisure time.

Take some time in your next burst of leisure time to see what you might be missing. Slow down, see what details there are in what you do for fun, and you might find your leisure to be much richer than you thought…

… and of course, the stealth move is that if you squeeze more juice out of your leisure time with attention to detail, chances are your skills in the workplace will magically accelerate, too.

Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com! Want to take your conference or event to the next level? Book me to speak and get the same quality information on stage as you do on this blog.

11 Little Secrets

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Apr 5, 2010 in Awakening, Productivity | 38 comments

One of the peculiar habits we have in our hyperactive, short attention span culture is the habit of looking for the big secret. We strive desperately to look for the next big thing, the next big secret, the magic wand that will make everything better. What we tend to overlook – or most of us, anyway – are the little secrets, the little hacks and tweaks you can make to your day, your year, your life to help things operate better.

Most of the little secrets aren’t secret at all, or at least not the knowledge portion. The mystery and power of the little secrets are entirely in the execution of said secrets.

I’ve put together just a few of mine, and would love it if you shared yours in the comments.

1. Take a multivitamin daily before bed. I learned this trick from a friend who said that since most of our body repairs – healing, growth, restoration – happens at night while we sleep, it only makes logical sense to have the proper tools on hand. I find that a multivitamin with a tall glass of water helps get the next day started on the right foot.

2. Get up early. There is an incredible amount of productive time before 9 AM. Thanks to a much shorter commute, I can afford the luxury of sleeping until 6 AM and still take advantage of the early morning hours when the phone isn’t ringing and the inbox isn’t flooding over.

3. Five minutes of spiritual practice daily. Whatever your thing is that refreshes your spirit and reaffirms the rightness and brightness of your presence in the world, do it daily without fail. Even with a nice short commute to work now, I still pack it in before I ever get to the office. For those so interested in my specific practice, go check out How To Own The World by Stephen K. Hayes.

4. Work out before the day starts. I’m one of those folks who just can’t get motivated to work out at night. Whether it’s stuff from the day, fun time with the family, or class, working out at night is draining rather than refreshing to me. Working out first thing in the morning before the day starts is what works best for me. Your mileage will vary, but try to pack 20 minutes of cardio in at least twice a week, if not more. Also, experiment with different kinds of fitness. I’m not wild about running but I love using elliptical machines. I suck badly at basketball but I’m an avid martial artist. Find your thing and do it often.

5. Wonder how I find the time to do as much as I do? No television. Very little general news beyond skimming the headlines and Bloomberg.com. I choose Bloomberg as a primary news source because most investors won’t put up with the useless BS in regular news about celebrities and what’s trendy. Investors want only the stuff that’s going to make them productive, and so do I. That may mean that I’m a fashion disaster and a cultural n00b, but I’ll be a productive fashion disaster, dangit.

6. Twenty minutes a day reading, first thing in the office. Long before the day gets started, I’m hitting my favorite marketing, sales, motivation, economics, and Warcraft blogs to see what’s shaking in the world from the ground level perspective. If you’d like to get a sample of what blogs I read, grab this OPML file from Marketing Over Coffee.

7. Twenty minutes a day creating, first thing in the office. After I’ve caught up on my reading, I create. I might blog, edit a photo, sketch some things in a notepad, but I take advantage of the quiet morning hours to create.

8. Daily review. Except on days when the Internet is fail, I sit down on Skype with my personal assistant Chel Wolverton and review my inbox, calendar, and items that need my attention so that important stuff for the day doesn’t get missed.

9. Coffee and water. It’s no secret at all that I drink a lot of coffee. What is kind of a secret is that I try to balance so that I drink twice as much water as I do coffee daily. It’s astonishing how much a single bottle of water (I keep a 1 liter refillable bottle on my desk) can make a difference in your energy level during the day.

10. Rigorous boundaries. I’m extremely selective in who I actually listen to, in what email is worth my time (see my contact form), and what can happen when. For example, I block out a certain part of my day with family that is inviolable. I leave my cell phone and laptop in my car, and there’s literally no way to reach me during that time. I don’t respond to about 95% of the non-work email I get, either. At this point in my life, time is the most valuable resource I have, and I’m stingy as hell.

11. Daily time with friends. I play World of Warcraft on a daily basis, not just for the fun of virtually crushing my enemies and leaving ashes and misery in my destructive wake (yay Death Knights!), but also because some of the best conversations of the day happen with my friends in guild chat. They’re the trusted folks I bounce things off of, listen to, and share advice with.

None of these secrets is going to be a game-changer for you. None of these secrets will instantly make you rich or powerful (with the exception of #5, because pop culture is a giant time suck), but cumulatively, all of these secrets contribute a little towards helping me do what I do.

Now here’s the next part, the important part. What are the little secrets that YOU use to get more juice for the squeeze (a John Wall trademark expression) out of your day, week, or life? Leave yours in the comments.

Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com! Want to take your conference or event to the next level? Book me to speak and get the same quality information on stage as you do on this blog.