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How do you continue to network when you are out of town

June 14, 2009 by Leave a Comment

I have a great suggestion for you which I started to do a while back. I went on a week long vacation and one of the things that I did while I was on the vacation is start to send my networking partners emails.

The emails thanked them for everything that they had done for me up to that point. Just a simple, honest-to-goodness thank you note. It was received really well, too.

Since I wasn’t really able to make any commitments to meetings or anything, I just sent out thank you notes. It was really powerful because it was something that I hadn’t done much of in the past. So I really build some credibility with my networking partners while I was out of town.

What are some strategies that you have employed to continue your networking when you were out of town? Fire us your thoughts in the comments below! :).

Keeping your success in focus,
-Coach Kolansky

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How do you deal with someone who is competant but isn't willing to work with you?

June 14, 2009 by Leave a Comment

If someone is on your team but isn’t commited to working with you, then the best thing that you can do is offer them an ultimatum.

The best way I can think to describe it is this. If you are holding a water balloon in your hand (I know it may have been a while, but work with me here 😉 ) and you want it to go somewhere, it isn’t going to move unless you apply some kind of pressure to it. If you squeeze the bottom of the balloon, it will do one of two things.

  1. All the water will travel up through the balloon in the direction you’d like it to go.
  2. The balloon will explode all over you and then you can throw it away and be done with it.

Now to bring this back to dealing with people. If you give them a bit of a squeeze (ask them if they are in or out) they will make it clear what their intentions are.

Offer them the option to leave or stay, but don’t let them sit still. Squeezing them a little bit and forcing them to decide to commit or leave is going to be the best thing that you can do for them, because without commitment, they aren’t going to be any good for you or your business or even to themselves. They would be misplaced.

What are your thoughts? Got a better method to deal with slothful partners? Fire us your thoughts in the comments below.

Keeping your success in focus,
-Coach Kolansky

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If you lose a connection with someone, how do you bring them back into your network?

June 14, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Two words: Take responsibility.

If you want a relationship to work, one which you blew out of the water in the first place, then you need to stand up straight and apologize. People are often more forgiving than they look.

Be sure to follow your apology with a commitment, and then be sure to stick close with your commitment to help build trust with the person who you let drop.

I have had the unfortunate occasion to have to deal with this a select few times, and this strategy has worked wonderfully for me :).

What have you done in this situation? Fire us a comment in the discussion below :).

Keeping your success in focus,
-Coach Kolansky

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Approaching Government Entities

June 14, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Networking with government entities is not something which I can answer, but for the sake of completion with the 30 days of Coffee Tea You and Me I will open up discussion to you all :).

Do you have any experience with government entities and how to network with them? Fire us a comment below. Lets get a discussion going, here.

Also, check out Coach Powell’s answer in the 30 days of Coffee Tea You and Me.

Keeping your success in focus,
-Coach Kolansky

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Should you invite people into your social media networks if you don’t know them personally?

June 14, 2009 by 2 Comments

Anyone can be your “friend” these days. Social media networks like LinkedIn and Facebook have fairly loose policies (read: almost non-existent) about who can connect with who and so people are inviting other people into their networks all the time who they don’t actually know.

Is this a wise practice? Well, let’s take a look at the pros and cons:

Pros

  • You will be connected to waaaayyyy more people, which opens up your reach of who you can contact and communicate with.
  • You will be able to browse more information for doing research.
  • You will be able to keep tabs on a larger segment of the online population.
  • Opportunities will become available to you because you will notice someone updating with status or asking a question, or something that alerts you to a golden chance you would have missed otherwise.

Cons

Well…. one big con. You won’t know anyone in your online network, so your connection to them is one step above meaningless.

Some people go with a smaller, but more tight-knit network. Others connect with everyone and their brother, hoping that mass builds their network.

What are your thoughts? Are you an open networker, or a closed networker? Let us know in the comments below!

-Coach Kolansky

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How do you network with a group of people who doesn't like going online?

June 14, 2009 by Leave a Comment

It seems that just in the last two years, the entire business world took networking to the web. However, there are still pockets of people hanging out that don’t get on the Internet.

They are growing smaller and more far apart, but they are still large enough that it merits keeping privvy with networking skills we had before we got online.

One tactic you can use to network with people who are not web savvy, is to host events.

Hosting events is a wonderful way to build relationships with local business people. Just establish a location and start inviting people. Make sure to come up with a driving reason why they should be at the event.

People won’t come to an event they don’t see any benefit in attending. So be careful to craft a tempting offer and then let the games begin!

What have you done to network with the old school networkers who won’t bother to get online? Fire us your ideas in the comments below!

Keeping your success in focus,
-Coach Kolansky

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How do you work with LinkedIn Q&A

June 14, 2009 by Leave a Comment

LinkedIn’s Q&A section is an AMAZING way to network.

Here is one strategy that you can use when working with LinkedIn Q&A. Answering questions which are relevent to your field. Be concise, and clear with your response. Then contact the question author directly and start to build a relationship with them.

Ask then questions like:

  • Why they posted up their question to LinkedIn.
  • What projects they are currently working on and how could you help them.
  • What they thought of your answer and if they need clarification on any of the given points.
  • Etc.

Ask them engaging questions and start to get to know them. Using this method, you will be able to build your network with people who are naturally interested in your field. Not bad, if I do say so myself :).

Another idea, if you want to meet people who are your prospects. Ask yourself what questions you think they are good at answering. Then seach for those kinds of questions and contact the other people answering the questions. Instant prospecting :).

What are some strategies that you have used for LinkedIn’s Q&A section?

Keeping your success in focus,
-Coach Kolansky

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How do you use blogging to drive business?

June 14, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Blogging is one of the most powerful ways to build an audience, a following, and ultimatelty, a society and culture. This means that it is also one of the most powerful ways to drive business.

Why? Because a popular blog will allow you to bring in gobs of cash by simply suggesting that people purchase something.

Sounds cool, doesn’t it?

Well, unfortunately, it isn’t all flowers and butterflies.

Building a blog to popularity takes a LOT of time and effort. It is a constant devotion that will suck up hours of your time. By the time you arrive at a point where you can say “try purchasing this item” and people flock to your store, you have earned the right to do that!

With that said, in my humble opinion, the best way to drive business with your blog, is to ensure that you build a following.

Grab a copy of Tribes By Seth Godin and then start applying his principles to your blog.

You’ll be rocking along in no time.

But, enough of me. What are ways that you have discovered to drive business with your blog? Fire us a comment in the discussion below! :).

Keeping your success in focus,
-Coach Kolansky

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How effective is facebook for business networking?

June 14, 2009 by 10 Comments

There are many people out there you view facebook as “for personal use only.” They avoid facebook for business use like the plague. The interesting thing, though, is that facebook has many tools for fabulous networking on the social networking website.

So when I am prompted with the question: “how effective is facebook for business networking?” My response is, very effective.

The trick is to first actually start using it for business.

It is important to understand where facebook came from in order to understand where it is going.

Facebook began as a social site for a few people at Harvard university to post up pictures of themselves to participate in “hot or not” style quizzes. It moved from its humble beginnings to become quite impressive as a college only social networking website.

Only two years ago, the site opened up its doors to the general public and allowed others to participate on the site.

Since then, the people at Facebook have been adding all kinds of new features and enhancements to the site in order to better accomodate a larger population of people hanging out at facebook.com.

With this in mind, you can see that Facebook is ever expanding into new areas, and one of these areas is business. The site now supports a wide variety of ways to advertise your business and yourself on facebook. So take advantage of it, its there for the taking!

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Post your thoughts in the comments below. I know I have quite the opinion, but I understand that there are other opinions out there. What do you think?

Keeping your success in focus,
-Coach Powell

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How effective is facebook?

June 3, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Facebook.com is one of the biggest phenomenon’s to hit the web since google. From a networking standpoint, though, how good is facebook, really?

I’ll tell you, from my perspective, facebook is amazing as a way to keep consistent communication going with all of my networks. Of course, I’m one of those people who is willing to tie together their business contacts with their personal contacts — not everyone wants to be that way.

But if you are not willing to share your facebook account with your business contacts, then they won’t be participating in your brand as much as you might like.

What do you think about facebook? Does it stand up to the heat of networking? Hit us up in the comments below.

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