Music-on-Hold...really?

I attended a meeting this morning where I had an opportunity to spend sixty seconds describing my business and what constitutes a good referral for Sharp Associates. I chose to talk about Message-on-Hold and said a good referral for me was a company or business that had Music-on-Hold.

"Music-on-Hold?" I said, "Really?...music? Sharp Associates is not in the entertainment business, I'm in the sales business. And Message-on-Hold can be an effective sales tool when you work with an experienced professional. With more than 30 years of experience (my God that makes me sound old...well), I can help make your cash register ring."

Message-on-Hold should be thought of as a sales tool, not a distraction...it provides the business with twenty or thirty seconds of uninterrupted time with a caller...no channel to change, no pages to turn. If a company is using that valuable time to entertain, they have lost a valuable opportunity.

Pay Attention to Existing Customers

I've been working with another vendor on a project for a mutual client. I need the other vendor to assist with a piece of telephony equipment they installed, and I can't do my portion of the project until they do theirs'. Well, it's been weeks and neither the client nor I can get the vendor to contact us to get things moving. Last week, the president of the vendor company was at a meeting I attended, and was talking about a recent big job he had completed...then I remembered.

Several years ago, the president and I spent many many hours together talking about business. I always admired his sales skills (I really like good sales types) and his mastery of the technology he represented. At that same meeting, he confessed to me he really enjoyed selling, but not so much the rest of his business. He was energized being in front of prospects, making the pitch, and closing the sale...then he loses interest. “I can't wait to get on to the next prospect,” he told me, “it's probably wrong, but I'm not interested in the delivery, installation and service.”

Apparently, his style has established the culture of his entire company; and I don't think he has even noticed what has happened. I've had several customers of his, large and small, tell me they can't get anyone to return phone calls, respond to emails, or even finish the installation! As a recovering salesman (and I was a good one), this is the kind of vendor I would target to appropriate every account on their books.

I was never interested in making one sale to a customer, I wanted a customer for life. I would make repeated calls on even with my smallest account because, well...you never know. I wanted long term relationships with my clients, not a quick sale...and it paid off. To this day, I continue to call my old clients on their birthdays even though I no longer am in the business. They were my livelihood, I became a trusted member of their team, and they became my friends. I cared, and still care, about their businesses and their success.

I'm going to call the president and have coffee with him. I hope he accepts my observation for the aid I mean it to be...if not, I'm going to have to re-evaluate my opinion of his business acumen.

Next time, we'll talk about the value of existing customers vs. new customers.

It's tough, but it's not all dark!

For all my optimistic talk when this recession began...I've got to admit, this is a different animal.

Like most of you, I have friends who have lost their positions, and our area has been rocked by a General Motors' plant closing among all the other stories we hear daily.

But there are bright spots...businesses doing well, exploding adult education (an improved workforce is always a plus), and new opportunities making themselves known.

I too have clients who have cut back, but I continue to work everyday, and my attitude has improved as I continue to interview entrepreneurs on my online talk show ( "Just the Other Side of Seven" Wednesday evenings at 7:10pm EDT www.talkshoe.com/tc/43512 ).

There have been some significant gains in selected stocks as well (I follow that stuff and subscribe to a number of newsletters).

Plus, I continue to run...that's free, walk...also free, work in the yard...ditto, watching the birds at the feeders...almost free, and I'm enjoying life lived less complicated.

Bill

Morton Got It Right

"When it rains, it pours," is the power slogan for Morton Salt...ain't it the truth? The life of a freelancer seems to be feast or famine. There is never that steady flow of just enough work to keep one busy...but no burdened. Instead it's like, "Oh my God...not another job! How am I going to get all this done? Why couldn't they have called last week when I spent two days watching my toenails grow (which is really pretty cool if you have the chance to do it).

It's one of the reasons I don't get to the blog as often as I should...how's that for an excuse?

But life has it's own plan and it's own pace. The fun is watching to see how you're going to juggle everything to meet deadlines, maintain quality, and still have time for things like food, sleep, and marketing/sales to make sure you don't have too much toenail time.

I'm a firm believer in time management...but a freelancer's time belongs to others...and their emergencies become our emergencies. We're lucky to have them and lucky to be able to help them.

I'd like to know what I'm doing tomorrow (or not doing...tomorrow is Saturday and I'd like to know that I have the entire day to do things like wash my car, or run in the sunshine, or sit with a beer and watch the hummingbirds), but someone may need me at the last minute and I'll be there for them.

Feast or famine. Yep, Morton had it right.

Business is Fun

Isn't business fun? If it's not, you're probably in the wrong one (business that is). I find people have fun in their businesses for different reasons: one enjoys the battle for new clients; another enjoys the time he gets to spend with customers, yet another gets an ego boost from being recognized in public. All different, yet all the same.

I suppose for younger folks, work is all about survival and accumulation. As one gets a bit longer in the tooth, the challenge and rewards morph into something different (in my mind, something better).

There is satisfaction in the work itself. I smile when I write something clever or playback a voicetrack that nails what I am trying to accomplish, or, now, when an interview goes really well on www.talkshoe.com/tc/43512 .The money is nice, make no mistake about that, but that special feeling tells me I'd do this even if I won that big lottery (of course, I'd have to play to win...wouldn't I?).

A friend's father was a physician of some reputation. In college, my friend pursued medicine for a few years, then went to his father to apologize for deciding medicine was not the career he wanted. No one was more surprised than my friend when his successful father replied, "Don't make the mistake I made, do what you enjoy."

I hope everyone not only enjoys his/her labor, but finds it satisfying and fun.

Survival

Survival during this economy is requiring a new, or perhaps renewed, creativity. The income streams we came to depend upon are changing; which does not mean there are no income streams, only streams that have changed course or streams into which we have never stuck our toe.

Learning new technologies (whether actually new, or simply new to me) and seeking new partnerships are becoming second nature. It's a new way of working, but I like it! The new approach is blowing out some of the cobwebs formed from years of doing business the same way. www.smooth-male-voiceover-talent.com is changing along with much of the other elements of my company.

The new "talkshow" ( www.talkshoe.com/tc/43512 ) is proving to be lots of fun as I worry about the next week's guests, watching the details on downloads, podcasts, etc. to get an idea of how the audience is growing. I think I'll do the next blog on growing a call...that would be good for me.

So, survival brings invention, renewal, exploration and it's all good.

Full Moon? I believe it.

Last night was a full moon...I happened to see it, but I would have guessed it even if the sky had been completely obscured by clouds.

I have this new show on Talkshoe (http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/43512), and I'm having the best time interviewing entrepreneurs and other gutsy folks who refuse to give in to pessimism even in the face of unrelenting bad news on the economy by the "main stream media." Most of those to whom I speak began their businesses in economic circumstances similar to those we're experiencing today.

I love to talk to these interesting, energizing, hardworking and positive people....so what's the problem? Well, last night everything went wrong. My studio computer refused to talk to the Talkshoe website...meaning I couldn't talk to the website.

So I called into my own show on the telephone...but, after the show, the tape reveals a problem with my audio (unheard on my end of the conversation) I can only blame on gremlins or the phone company.

Then, the chair in which I'm sitting falls apart in the middle of a guest's most important point...all you hear is a loud crash and muffled (remember, the sound sucked) profanity followed by my own laughter (I laugh at myself a lot).

I thought that was it, but when I awakened this morning, the grease I noted on my thumb last night from trying to repair the chair with one hand, while still talking to my guest and holding the phone in the other, well, that grease turned out to be a very painful bruise that makes my thumb look like I just cast a vote in an Iraqi election.

Say what you will, I blame the moon.