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

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

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

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

What is The Perfect Follow-up Strategy for Today’s Active Networker?

Just a few weeks ago I asked this magical question to all of my contacts on LinkedIn. The answers that I got were absolutely fantastic! I can’t wait to share them with you here.  After I throw my two cents in, I’ll be summarizing some of the best answers.  Here we go!

When I think of follow-up, my mind naturally begins to remember methods that pushy self absorbed sales people have used on me in the past. Here are some of the issues I’ve had to face. I’ll bet that you will identify with at least a few:

  • They don’t even know my name
  • They haven’t gotten my permission to contact me
  • They talk to me only about their offer or why I should be interested in them
  • They don’t prove any level of competency that even a reasonable person would trust
  • They fumble through a canned presentation
  • They’re too familiar (I don’t even know you for heavens sake)
  • They don’t even tell me how they came to contact me (I really want to know which of my idiot friends put you up to contacting me)
  • hey ask stupid questions like “would you like to save money or make money Mr. Powell” (my answer is “NO-click”)
  • They follow the same old sales tactics that didn’t work when I actually did answer the phone
  • They offer no real value up front (really why should I listen to you or call you back?)
  • They pass me on to someone that really knows what they are talking about (Did I say that I hate that? Just in case, I HATE THAT!)
  • I know more about their products or services than they do
  • They argue with me about what I want (If I don’t know what I want by the way, they tell me that their product is the solution for everything I could want)
  • They make outlandish unsubstantiated claims
  • They make no promises or interesting claims at all

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