Month: April 2011

Categories
Networking

LinkedIn Marketing Debate – Should You Think of Your LinkedIn Profile as a Resume

Article Contributed by Kristina Jaramillo

Recently I read a LinkedIn article for small business owners that stated, “You should think of your profile as an online resume.”  I could not disagree more. And, when you are done reading this article, let me know what you think!

Now, while you think whether or not your LinkedIn profile should be regarded as a resume, let me ask you: When was the last time you read an interesting and intriguing resume?

Most resumes tend to be boring and bland.  Now, how is this going to help you attract viewers and prospects?  Simple, it can’t.

As a small business owner or a business development executive, you have to start thinking of your profile as a marketing tool and not a resume.  Since you have to change your mindset about this, I have developed six distinct reasons why your profile should not look like a resume.

Why You Should Not Think of Your LinkedIn Profile as Your Resume

Reason #1:  A resume is not personal enough.

The goal of LinkedIn is to connect with people and build relationships. The only way you will connect with prospects is to personalize your profile.  To do this you need to tell stories and share information that gives a better scope of:

¨      Who you are.

¨      What makes you tick.

¨      How you can help the prospect.

¨      What new and exciting information you have to offer them.

Make viewers want to learn more about what you and your business can do for them.   Be creative and use all the applications that LinkedIn provides you can show videos, presentations and documents.

Reason #2: Remember LinkedIn is a social human network.

Most resumes lack that human touch that LinkedIn can provide if used correctly.  You need to make your profile interesting and enjoyable to read.  You have to keep in mind that if you want others to read it, you should want to read it too.  Here is an excerpt of my summary to give you an idea of what I mean.

With over 80 million professional members in over 200 countries, LinkedIn offers small business owners and internet marketer’s unlimited opportunities to build, and nourish profitable relationships online.

However, out of the 80+ million people on LinkedIn, only a FEW successful companies and internet marketers are using LinkedIn to its’ fullest profit-making potential.

Do you want to know some of my top secrets on how to get more business using LinkedIn? As a Social Media Expert (not a self-proclaimed expert, the New York Times called me that) who specializes in LinkedIn, I’ve uncovered…”14 Underground Secrets to Making Money And Taking Complete and Total Control Of Your Industry and Niche on LinkedIn” Here I reveal mistakes that other LinkedIn experts are even making.

Reason #3: The goal of LinkedIn profile is to get people to connect with you so that you can funnel them back to your website.

Your profile is a way to tell prospects what you and your business can do for them. Your LinkedIn profile allows you to show the different areas of your business and then lead prospects to the appropriate webpage to get even more information. The goal of a resume however, is to list accomplishments, achievements and jobs held. It simply lists your job descriptions, past and present.  A resume does not mention the kind of person you are and why someone should connect with you. And, a resume doesn’t allow you to focus on the here and now and what you can provide your potential clients today like your LinkedIn profile should.

Reason #4: Resumes are usually limited to 1-2 pages while a LinkedIn profile is not.

While it’s usually not a good idea to submit a resume that is more than 2 pages long, you don’t have that kind of restriction with an online profile.  You can include more information, more details, more accomplishments, more strengths and more keywords.  The more information you include the more credibility you will gain, the more connected to your prospects you will become. Once you gain their trust, it will become much easier to sell your products, services or even the idea of joint venture relationship.

Reason #5: A LinkedIn profile enables you to brand yourself much better and much easier than a resume ever could.

Everything from yourself, your company to your products and services can be branded on your profile.  For example, if you are the best at selling widgets, then make sure your profile clearly articulates that – and reinforce your brand throughout the profile. LinkedIn recently added some new sections that will further enhance your ability to sell yourself to potential clients. What resume will allow you to include postings about your publications, certifications or skills.  Those sections usually get edited out due to space.

Now, do you think of your LinkedIn profile as your online resume?

Do you now realize the marketing potential LinkedIn gives you – if only you’d change your mindset?

Great! Now, I invite you to check out what other LinkedIn marketing mistakes you are making and opportunities you are missing. Grab my free special report at: http://www.GetLinkedInHelp.com

About the Author:

LinkedIn Marketing Expert Kristina Jaramillo creates online marketplace opportunities for small business owners who want more website traffic, prospects and profits. Now, with her free special report, you can uncover how you can become “the trusted source for your industry on LinkedIn” fast plus learn how to avoid the top 14 mistakes. Get this information for free at: http://www.GetLinkedInHelp.com

Categories
Entrepreneurs

3 Secrets to Business Success I Learned From My Grandpa

My 96-year-old Grandpa recently passed away, and as a tribute to his memory I wanted to share some of the gems he passed on to me.

Grandpa was a successful entrepreneur — he started his business, a machine shop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, over 50 years ago.

Even though he never was able to get his head around the idea of Internet marketing, one thing he DID understand is business. Below are 3 tips he shared with me in order to help you build a solid, successful business:

1. Being lucky is contagious. Grandpa would often tell us stories about how his successful friends and associates were the ones who were lucky in Vegas — the ones who weren’t successful were also the ones who weren’t so lucky in Vegas (or other areas for that matter)

This sounds a little like law of attraction, right? Except grandpa would never call it law of attraction. I think it’s more like a core belief — if a core belief of yours is you’ll make a lot of money, then you’ll make a lot of money. If your core belief is you’ll struggle financially, you’ll struggle financially. Grandpa believed he would make a lot of money — therefore not only did he have a successful business but he also made money investing in various things (not to mention he also got lucky in Vegas quite a bit).

2. Being in a mastermind helps you grow your business. Except grandpa would never call it a mastermind. He would call it hanging out with his friends and associates, drinking, playing cards, talking about business and trying to one-up the other.

(This is also a good example of who you hang out with determines your business results.)

What’s even more interesting about all these stories is how this “mastermind” would self-select themselves in and out of the group. If you read between the lines (and after listening to the stories over the years) you start to see that his friends who hit hard-times financially and weren’t able to recover, quit hanging out with the group, but the successful ones stuck around (or new successful ones would join in).

3. Know your strengths and use them to your advantage. Again, grandpa would never say it like that but it’s what he did. For example, grandpa loves to get a deal. Especially in Laughlin and Vegas. So he would often negotiate with the hotel (to get a free meal or room or whatever) and he would use his age to his advantage. He would stand there and hem and haw and move as slowly as he possibly could until they gave him what he wanted just to get him out of their hair and help the next person. He especially liked doing this when there was a long line behind him.

There’s no question grandpa was a character. I have all sorts of stories about him, like how he used to go to Bingo games in Vegas and shout out “Bingo” only to have the Bingo caller tell him “sir, there haven’t been enough numbers called yet for you to have Bingo.” Grandpa would say “oh” then 2 numbers later yell Bingo out a second time. (I’m surprised he would make it out of those Bingo lounges intact.)

And of course, we have his girlfriend, who is 20 years younger than he is.

Ah, I will miss him.

But the point here is this — grandpa never really went in for a lot of self development or personal development stuff, but yet he still came to many of the same conclusions those disciplines teach. Mainly you need to the right mindset if you want to be successful. So take it from grandpa — if you want to be successful, start with the obstacles and blocks in your head.

Categories
Business Ideas

6 Tips for Better Office Brainstorming Sessions

Article Contributed by John Brook

Brainstorming is a very effective tool to use within business settings; however, it is important that all managers and team leaders take not that there are wrong ways to go about brainstorming. Brainstorming in inappropriate manners only wastes time, and we all know wasting time means lower worker productivity and a loss of money. Let’s take a look at several different tips that can be utilized to make your office a little more successful when it comes to solving problems by brainstorming.

1. Set Up Different Sessions

Brainstorming itself is broken up into several different portions. There is no sense in trying to cram all the parts of a brainstorming adventure into one session. In fact, different parts of brainstorming include critical thinking and other parts include creative thinking, and each of these parts take utilizing different sides of persons’ brains. So, do not let your group overwork and overwhelm itself by trying to use both sides of their brains at one time. Set up several different sessions for brainstorming.

2. Never Criticize

As creative thinking is taking place in a brainstorming session there should be no person there to criticize, no matter how silly or absurd an idea may sound it should be left out on the table at least for the first brainstorming session. There are a large number of ideas that often seem silly in the beginning; however, these ideas are often so creatively thought of that they can be utilized in several different manners to address several different types of problems.

Having a critic at a brainstorming session also dampens the atmosphere, creative ideas tend to not flow as easily. In fact, many people taking part in the brainstorming session will keep all their ideas to their self in fear they will only be criticized if they speak up. Not only should negative criticism be left at home for the first brainstorming session but praise for ideas should be left at home too. While this may seem silly it does prove to be helpful because people will generally throw more ideas out on the table knowing they will not receive praise or criticism.

3. Move On To Better Ideas

Just like said before there are many creative ideas that often lead to a formation of more and more ideas being developed; however, when an idea or even a heap of ideas run dry it is time to move on. Do not waste time trying to revive an idea just because it sounds good.

4. Try To Come Up With As Many Ideas As Possible

Always, always, always seek more and more ideas. The more ideas that are thrown out on the table the more a group will have to work with. As long as tip two stated above can be thoroughly and effectively followed then the ability to gain as many ideas as possible from group members should be no problem.

5. Establish Time Limits

One of the most important elements to implement into brainstorming sessions is time limits. The best ideas and most quantitative amount of ideas will come out within the first four to six minutes of a brainstorming session. Keeping this is mind it is always best for the brainstorming sessions to be kept at a minimal time limit, generally no longer than ten to fifteen minutes to start, brainstorm and finish.

6. Define All The Factors

When brainstorming for ideas on how to solve an issue it is best to first brainstorm on what the exact issue is that needs to be resolved. So, do not always start out a brainstorming session looking for solutions. Be creative and bring ideas to the table that are most likely causing the issue to be occurring. After ideas for both issues and solutions have been developed it is best to narrow down the ideas by making a list; however, everyone in the group should agree on ideas that should be kept or thrown out. If all group members cannot agree for an idea to be thrown out then it should be kept because at least one member sees some potential in it. That group member should go home and develop the idea to a further level and present their developments to the group at a later date. If the group does not like the further developed idea it can then be thrown out.

About the Author

Deeply involved with OfficeKitten.co.uk, John Brook finds himself helping out by writing reviews of cheap office furniture on the internet.

Categories
Planning & Management

How Not to Work Evenings & Weekends

Article Contributed by Jeff Beals

Jane Schulte is really quite remarkable.

She’s an entrepreneur, who runs two successful businesses. She grew her company, PRISM Title, from eight to 60 employees in only 18 months. She has published four books, two of which are award winning. She speaks to a variety of audiences about business success. She has been featured in Jeffrey Gitomer’s “Sales Caffeine” newsletter and many other media outlets. On top of all this, she’s an accomplished artist whose works have been commissioned.

That’s certainly an impressive bio.  But do you want to know what’s most remarkable about Jane Schulte?

She doesn’t work evenings and weekends.

“I might log in on my laptop for a minute right when I get home,” Schulte said, “but I don’t work in the evening unless it’s a crisis or some client needs my help and absolutely can’t wait.”

Imagine that! How can a person accomplish so much, yet do it so efficiently, that she doesn’t take work home with her each night?

The answer is time management.

When asked how she can accomplish so much, Schulte gave a lot of reasons – a talented and loyal staff, energy, drive – but she focused mostly on time management.

It wouldn’t be fair to say Schulte is obsessed with time management, but she has definitely mastered it in a way very few others have. That discipline has allowed her to excel in many wide-ranging things simultaneously.

Schulte’s path to success is kind of old fashioned in that she worked her way through the proverbial “school of hard knocks.” She grew up – and still lives – in the northern Kentucky suburbs of Cincinnati, Ohio. She started working as a legal secretary in 1981. She was promoted to a real estate paralegal two years later and landed her first management job in 1985. A few short years later, she was an executive. Just recently, she started an additional company, PRISM Business Advisors. She and her husband Greg together have three sons, one of whom works at NASA. The other two are enrolled at the University of Kentucky.

Certainly tenacity and drive mixed with competence and business acumen are important, but more than any other skill, time management is number one.

In fact, when asked what advice she would give a young entrepreneur, Schulte quickly said they should get a handle on their time.

“If you don’t control your time, all things are not possible,” she said. “I can’t stress that enough. I’ve seen so many people, who could be so much more successful if they weren’t so scattered, and they didn’t get overwhelmed and bogged down. They become immobilized. There are so many things hitting them, and they don’t have any systems in place to take care of that or keep their stress at a manageable level.”

The sad thing is that many of these overwhelmed and ultimately burned-out people are full of talent.

“Get a handle on your time, because we only have so much,” Schulte said. “In order to be really successful, you have to be able to do more than just one thing. You have to be diversified, flexible and agile enough to go where there are opportunities.”

Schulte is so committed to good time management that she authored a how-to book, Work Smart Not Hard: Organizational Tips and Tools That Will Change Your Life. In the book, she describes both strategies and tactics for getting a grip on life’s most precious resource.

She preaches the importance of de-cluttering our desks and email in-boxes. She describes her PEND system, which stands for “Put an End to Needless Distraction™. PEND consists of a folder for each day of the month where paper items are strategically filed. She also has an electronic PEND system for emails. She uses Microsoft Outlook’s task feature, dual monitors on her desk PC, and takes full advantage of the power offered by smart phones and remote access to office computer databases.

Ultimately, the effective time manager uses all the tools available.

“The idea is ‘don’t remember anything,’” Schulte said. “Use your tools and system, so you are free to take care of the task at hand whatever that might be.”

There’s another tool that is incredibly important: delegation. Accomplishing things through other people is fundamental if you want to succeed and enjoy a fulfilling life. By leveraging the work of others, you multiply your own abilities. In fact, Schulte said delegation is one of best strengths as a leader.

“I’ve taught a lot of people what I know and what I do,” she said. “That way, I can send a lot of projects or parts of projects to other people.”

By the way, if you would like to learn more about Jane Schulte, go to PrismSuccess.com or find her books on Amazon.com.

About the Author:

Jeff Beals is an award-winning author, who helps professionals do more business and have a greater impact on the world through effective sales, marketing and personal branding techniques.  As a professional speaker, he delivers energetic and humorous keynote speeches and workshops to audiences worldwide.   You can learn more and follow his “Business Motivation Blog” at www.JeffBeals.com.

Categories
How-To Guides

How to Accelerate Your Company’s Product Line Growth and Stop the Continual Decline in Profitability

Article Contributed by Bill Bachrach

The management team cannot believe that their company’s profitability continues to decline at a consistent rate, quarter after quarter.  “How can this be?” says the Chief Marketing Officer.  “Five of our customers have named the company supplier of the year!  The crystal bowls and the plaques with our name on it are displayed in the front lobby.”

Most C-Suite executives are very proud of their awards, yet they have difficulty understanding why profitability continues to decrease.  As a consequence, the executive team focuses its efforts on minimizing their internal cost structure. But these efforts do not seem to be enough to turn the company’s profitability around.

Instead, executives need to know how to break a spiraling downward financial situation and forge a new path that will accelerate growth and profitability. To do this you need to understand:

  • The forces affecting the profitability of the product line
  • Your true profitability drivers
  • How to create a pathway to accelerating growth

What Forces Affect Your Product Line Profitability?

The ability to make money comes down to what the customer is willing to pay for your product relative to their needs and competing products.  One method to determine the value of the product is to use a Product Line Profitability model, which looks at the difference between the product sales and the production and operating costs. In this model, the product sales are dependent on the markets and regions where the products are sold including their past and future sales projections. The product production costs and operating expenses are comprised of a number of costs including material costs, labor costs, support costs, and capital equipment costs.

The Product Line Profitability model provides the building blocks for identifying the business’s strengths and weaknesses as it relates to the profitability drivers. A product line check-up is good practice to understand how the internal and external forces are changing your business.

Now, the Product Line Profitability model provides the executives with the tools to analyze the organization’s cost structure today and to begin developing a landscape for profitability.  But the model itself is not enough to truly get at what are the underlying drivers to accelerate profitability and to understand what needs to be leverages for growth

What Are Your True Profitability Drivers?

Identifying and understanding the influence of the internal and external forces that drive the acceleration of growth must include the analysis of  these five areas:

1)      Sales channel profitability

2)      Product line price fluctuation

3)      Product line material and labor cost

4)      Organizational efficiency

5)      Product line development time and traction.

A typical development during a product’s life cycle is the entry of a competitor’s product line in the market with similar form, fit, and function that now competes against your product. What happens now?  Everything is decreased – your product line price and profitability, your sales channel profitability and your organizational efficiency. The product line material costs may need to be decreased and the product line may need to be re-designed.

Your profitability drivers vary depending on the product, market, and industry. But once you uncover these driver, you will be able to pinpoint the business and organizational issues that need to be dealt with first as you develop a business growth acceleration game plan for your product lines.

How to create a Pathway to Accelerating Growth

As your executives reviews the profitability drivers as well as the internal and external forces for each product line, a picture will emerge on the strengths and weaknesses of the business and organization.   Analysis should also include changes that concentrate on making money for the business as opposed to whether or not a product or customer will be eliminated.  This picture, then, becomes the basis for unifying the company’s business strategy and the day-to-day game plan for execution to make money.

A map then needs to be drawn step-by-step to ensure the company’s growth is on an accelerated path to growth.  However, this pathway to accelerating growth does not happen instantaneously. It evolves over a period of time with direction, leadership, focus, dedication, and discipline. Most importantly, everyone (from the CEO on down) must embrace the chosen pathway, as they will need to execute it.

Follow these tips and you will accelerate the growth of your company’s wealth and value. This is the same approach that I took as a C-level executive to guide companies in electronics, manufacturing and high-technology industries to higher profits and significant returns for owners and investors.

About the Author:

Revenue and Profit Growth Expert, Bill Bachrach, has led numerous companies in various C-Level positions and works with Boards of Directors and Investors who want to accelerate their company’s wealth and market value.  His firm has developed a 5 Step Model for Profitability that quickly creates a pathway for improved revenues and rapid market expansion.  To learn more about this model and uncover the #1 secret to building momentum for growth and profitability, check out Bill’s free articles at: http://www.linkedin.com/in/billbachrach01