Author: Ethan Theo

Abe WalkingBear Sanchez is an International Speaker / Trainer / Consultant on the subject of cash flow / sales enhancement and business knowledge organization and use. Founder and President of www.armg-usa.com, WalkingBear has authored hundreds of business articles, has worked with numerous companies in a wide range of industries since 1982 and has spoken at many venues including the Shakespeare Globe Theater in London.

Categories
Human Resource

How To Use Social Media To Your Advantage In The Job Market

In recent years, the reference-checking landscape has changed dramatically for prospective employers and job seekers alike. The advent of social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook allow prospective employers to quickly research reference data on a prospective candidate, says professional reference checking company Allison & Taylor.

This is a boon from the hiring manager/recruiter perspective, as vast personal and professional networks can be accessed – the membership of LinkedIn alone exceeds 135 million members. Social media opens up the candidate pool; estimates suggest that a significant majority of hiring managers recruited through social networks in 2011- and that this trend will continue.

In addition, many hiring managers use social media such using as LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook (in addition to general Google searches) to check a potential candidate’s background. An employer can type in the candidate’s name, previous employers and dates of employment and might well come up with the names of a wide variety of current and former associates. What’s more, prospective employers can access the information on these sites even before a candidate is interviewed in person.

What are the ramifications for you, the job seeker? For one, a prospective employer might be able to access former references who are not those you would normally provide as references. Simply offering up the name of your former Human Resources representative, or of your immediate supervisor, might not be sufficient if an employer is able to utilize social media tools to access the names of your second-level supervisors or other key associates.

This being the case, what steps should you take now to ensure that your social media data isn’t used against you?

Consider these five proactive steps to manage your references in the Internet Age:

1. Take the time to research yourself online prior to beginning your interview process. (One example: “Google” yourself.) The odds are very high that your application, resume and credentials will be reviewed by prospective employers for inaccuracies – better that you identify them first, if they exist.

2. Consider expanding your reference list to prospective employers beyond simply an HR contact or supervisor. Associates like a supportive second-level supervisor or a matrix manager(s) can be key advocates in your behalf and might be more supportive than traditional references like immediate supervisors.

3. Find out what your references will say about you prior to beginning the interview process. Use a third-party reference verification firm to find out what references at your most recent places of employment (in particular) will actually say about you. Increasing the scope of your reference search (to second-level supervisors, etc.) may identify additional favorable references in senior positions whose names you may wish to invoke during the interview process.

4. When negative references are identified during a third-party search, consider taking remedial action intended to discourage such references from ever offering similar negative input to your future employers. Tools such as Cease & Desist letters have proven extremely effective in neutralizing future negative input from unfavorable references.

5. Know your rights. Be aware that employers are legally prohibited from using certain social media data they may discover about you during the hiring process, (e.g. data pertaining to your race, religion, age, sex, sexual preference, etc.). Employers open themselves up to lawsuits if they base their hiring decisions on such discriminatory information.

The ever-increasing prevalence of social media is a doubled edged sword; it has opened up countless employment opportunities, but has also given prospective employers added tools to investigate your background. By recognizing this and taking proactive steps, you use social media to your advantage – and gainful new employment.

About the Author:

Allison & Taylor and its principals have been in the business of checking references for corporations and individuals since 1984. Allison & Taylor is headquartered in Rochester, Mich. For further details on services and procedures please visit http://www.allisontaylor.com/.

Categories
Networking

LinkedIn Marketing for B2C Companies – The Audiences on LinkedIn That Will Double Your Sales Guaranteed

During a presentation that I was giving at a small business owner’s boot camp, I was asked a very interesting question by one of the attendees:

“I am a real estate agent and I am not sure how LinkedIn can help me since it is a business to business platform and I am targeting consumers and homeowners. Should I be focusing just on Facebook which is more consumer oriented? And, if I should be on LinkedIn, how can I best utilize it to help me obtain more business and clients?”

My Answer to How Business to Consumer (B2C) Companies Can Use LinkedIn Marketing

One of the biggest advantages of using LinkedIn if you are a B2B business is being able to access targeted prospects. Now, it’s quite difficult to do that if you are a B2C company as business professionals are there for these purposes:

•    Build and cultivate profitable relationships
•    Get the information they need to develop.

However, that doesn’t mean you should not be using LinkedIn marketing and just stick to Facebook and Twitter. Use Facebook and Twitter to build your community of prospects – but use LinkedIn marketing to attract these three audiences that can double your sales guaranteed:

1.    Media Professionals – A recent study showed that 92% of all journalists are on LinkedIn which is more than any other social networking site.  This means that you have more access to individuals who are looking to quote experts like you or publish articles regarding your industry and how you can help your prospective clients.  By reaching out to these journalists you can develop meaningful and valuable relationships as they will come to think of you as the expert in your field and ask for your information when they are putting together their next piece. This extra publicity will give you more exposure to even more prospects and enhance your credibility so prospects will want to buy from you.

2.    Referral Sources – Through LinkedIn you can build and enhance relationships with key influencers who can provide you with access to prospects you would otherwise not have known, met or done business with.  A referral source is a valuable tool because it is a third party endorsement and they can act as your sales agent as they want to give their customers and clients more value.

3.    Larger companies that offer products or services that are supplementary to yours – Smart companies are always looking to increase their revenues by giving their clients and customers more value. Think of the different companies and organizations that can add your products or services to their own at a premium price – and use LinkedIn to build relationships with the different company’s executives.

Your Next Steps…

1.    Figure out who would be the best referral sources, key influences, types of media and companies for you to connect with. For example, one of my newest LinkedIn Profile Makeover clients is a real estate agent who is an expert on short sells, foreclosures and troubled properties. Before we completed her profile, we had her brainstorm who would be the best referral sources which include:

•    Divorce attorneys – In a divorce couples often have a house to sell. Couples also have other traditional real estate assets that often have to be sold in a divorce. Plus, at least one of the parties in a divorce will need to relocate – meaning they’ll need to buy a new house.
•    Local bankruptcy attorneys who have clients who have no other choice
but to either short sell or go into foreclosure
•    Florida attorneys that represent HOA’s s so my client can help them with the rental of the property, property managementt and eventual short sell
•    Accountants who can refer clients to sell their residential or commercial properties to avoid further liability and eventual foreclosure
•    Financial planners, estate attorneys and probate attorneys who want to give homeowners relief from their unexpected financial burdens
•    Banks who want to sell their foreclosed properties in the shortest amount of time with the highest net to them

2.    Create a LinkedIn profile that is written for the referral sources and media you want to attract starting with your headline. In the headline, identify the audiences you want to connect with – and why they should want to connect with you. In your summary, explain to referral sources how you can be of value to their clients and customers and how your relationship will help them. Also, if you are trying to attract publicity, show the media that you are an expert. Use any media mentions to your advantage in your summary sections as well as having a complete media kit on your profile using the Box.net, Slideshare and Google Presentations applications. To help you create the copy you need for your LinkedIn profile, check out my Instant LinkedIn Marketing Templates at http://www.InstantLinkedInMarketingTemplates.com

3.    Stay on top of your referral sources’ and media professionals’ minds – Once you figure out who your best key influencers, referral sources and media types, start doing your research on LinkedIn and make connections. When you make a new connection, invite the referral source or media professional to your LinkedIn group where you provide tips, tools and articles. Every time you are published, featured or quoted in the media you should be announcing it to your connections and group members.  This will show them that you are a valuable resource and keep you on top of their minds.  So when a referral source has a client needing your expertise, they’ll think of you. And, when the media needs an expert to quote- they’ll come to you.

So create a strong LinkedIn profile using my Instant LinkedIn Marketing Templates, figure out who would be the best referral sources and media types and start making connections that can double your sales guaranteed.

About the Author:

LinkedIn Expert Kristina Jaramillo creates online marketplace opportunities for B2C companies and marketing executives that want to get more publicity, build relationships with key influencers and double their website traffic and sales. Now, with her free special report, you can uncover easy ways to gain more connections fast by avoiding the top 14 mistakes. Get this information for free at: http://www.Free14LinkedInMistakes.com   

Categories
Starting Up

Starting a Lawn Care Business – What Separates the Successful Business Owners from the Rest?

Everyone will have a different definition of success. As you proceed to set up and run your own lawn care business you should have a clear idea of what success means to you. Your goal may be to become a millionaire or it may simply be to reach a level of income that allows your family to live a comfortable lifestyle. You may want to become the dominant market player in your area or you may just want to have a business that can run smoothly without your presence, allowing you to take time off whenever you like.

Some lawn business owners reach goals like these. However, there are many that do not attain a reasonable level of success. For some, their lawn business becomes just like a job. It can even become a stressful low paying job if you are not careful.

Below I have listed out some of the factors that separate the successful lawn mowing business operators from the others. Here is what it takes to become a success in lawn care.

1) Marketing Expertise

When you start a lawn business you are really starting a marketing business as you success will depend on your ability to attract and maintain customers. You have to do solid research to find out who your customers are and what they are looking for. Only then can you tailor your brand and your offers to suit them. It’s all about being in the right place, at the right time and having your offer in front of the right people. It’s going to help immensely if what you have to offer is unique and allows you to sparkle amongst all of the other dull looking local lawn services.

You need to think of marketing as a system that must be constantly refined so that it brings you better and better results over time. Focus on generating more leads, test advertising and make it easy for prospects to contact you. Once you have generated an enquiry you have to know how to go out and sell your service to them.

Once you do acquire a new customer you have to know how to maximize the revenue that you get from them. You need to be selling multiple services and premium services. You always need to be ready with another up-sell so that you can politely push for more business from them.

Part of your success in marketing will involve accurate estimating. You have to come up with prices that allow you to seal profitable accounts without losing out due to quoting prices that are too high. You have to become good at knowing what you can get away with.

2) Reputation and Referrals

Once you have acquired customers you need to know how to keep them over the long term. This is not difficult if you continuously strive to provide a quality service as satisfied customers will naturally refer their friends to you. The best lawn business operators introduce referral systems that encourage customers to spread the word about them and refer new business.

3) Industry Knowledge

Whether you are going to be mowing lawns yourself or hiring employees for this purpose you need to understand the practical side of the business. To get the job done right you need to understand lawn care and the equipment that you’ll be using.

4) Productivity

You can have all of the accounts in your city, yet if you are not able to service them in an efficient manner you will struggle to stay in business. It’s all about getting the most out of the precious resources that you have; your money, your time and the time of your employees. Your daily business operations need to be refined so that you are getting as much done in a day as possible. Introduce systems to streamline your operations and help keep you organized. You’ll need to be running good software, know how to set up efficient routes and schedules and know how to increase productivity when you are out in the yards of your clients.

5) Attitude

Your success will also come down to your character and strength of mind. It is not easy to develop a successful business and many people give up along the way. You must understand that every failure gives you an opportunity to learn. If you have determination and are persistent then your success will be inevitable.

6) Leverage

Most successful people know how to use the resources of others to create wealth for themselves. While you can become a reasonable success in the lawn business by yourself you will not become rich unless you are hiring teams of employees to go out and mow lawns for you.

Leverage also applies to financial capital as well. Those entrepreneurs that take calculated risks by borrowing money to develop their businesses are usually able to grow faster than those without access to funding.

The lawn care business does not have to be difficult if you know what to expect. Focus on the fundamental ideas listed above and everything else should follow along nicely. Before you know it you will have the income and lifestyle that you are dreaming about.

About the Author:

Steve Sutherland runs StartaLawnMowingBusiness.com, a site dedicated to helping beginners get started in the lawn care business.

Categories
Success Attitude

Do More with Less

I was putting up some fencing around our horse pasture. Like most men, when I get involved in a project, a trip to the home improvement store becomes necessary. And I have to look around and make sure there’s nothing else I need, especially if power tools are involved.

Well, I bought what I thought I needed to do the fence. When I returned, I discovered that I already had the parts I needed from a previous project. I learned that if you do an inventory, you discover what you need and what you already have.

You do more with less.

You achieve more with less when you discover what your business needs and what you already have. Let’s inventory three aspects:

Attention

What gets most of your attention—the positive strengths of your business?

Or, the negative weaknesses?

Sure, we have to shore up the weak links in our chain of business operations from time to time. Do it quickly and efficiently whether it’s a personnel issue or software upgrade.

When you consistently focus on the negative, you find more problems to be solved. This use of your attention is counterproductive to your business’ growth.

Focus your attention instead on the positive strengths of your business.

One way to do this is to give yourself 10 minutes of positive thoughts each morning. Go over your calendar or list of tasks and spend 10 minutes visualizing positive outcomes. This focus on the best, positive possibilities for your work sets your attention compass on the due north of success. The rest of you follows.

Intention

What is it about your business that emotionally engages you? Why do you do this business instead of another one?

All business professionals have competing intentions. The real challenge for us to align our intentions with our attention. The positive strengths of your business are your priority attention. You couple those strengths with what you enjoy most about your business, or, as so many people talk about today, with what you’re passionate about.

You pair up your positive thoughts and people—strengths of your business—with your emotional engagement—your intentions—and create a vibrant, Work Positive business that spins off profits when you…

Action

…act on what you’ve paid attention to and given your intentions.

The question here is, “What do you do?”

How many business professionals do you know who, when you ask, “How’s business?” say something like, “All I do is solve personnel problems.”

What are they paying attention to? The weaknesses. So their actions reflect it.

How many more professionals tell you, “All I do is put out fires?”

Where are their intentions? Divorced from what they wish were their actions.

Such intentions pave the road to nowhere.

Action follows Attention and Intention.

Look at your to-do list and ask yourself, “Do these activities reflect my focus on positive strengths and people and what I get excited about in this business?”

Delegate or delete the ones that don’t.

Move the ones that do to the top of your list.

Then go do them.

That’s how you do more with less.

About the Author:

Best-selling author, speaker, and coach Dr. Joey Faucette shares how all of us working together create a more positive world this week. Adapted from his #1 Amazon best-seller, Work Positive in a Negative World.

Categories
People & Relationships

Coaching and Psychological Styles: Adjust Your Approach!

“Adjust your approach.” As a coach, you’re probably familiar with this concept, as different clients need different tools – and different types of communication – to achieve the results they’re looking for. But most often, these adjustments are based purely on intuition; sometimes they make a difference in the client relationship, and sometimes they don’t.

Just as problematic is the fact that coaches often don’t adjust their approach until the first approach has clearly failed to produce results, eroding client confidence and straining the coach/client relationship, sometimes to the breaking point. In this case, such adjustments are a classic case of “too little, too late.”

The Perceptual Style Theory offers a reliable means of avoiding this by giving you, the coach, a clear picture of who the client is before you begin working together. By making use of an assessment that reveals the client’s psychological type at the outset of the coaching relationship, it’s possible to make those important adjustments right away.

The power of this is hard to overstate, as it gives the client an immediate sense of being deeply understood. As the coaching relationship progresses, it also gives the coach a clear picture of what kind of language will speak to the client, and what kind of language won’t.

When you honor and connect with a client’s Perceptual Style (PS), you interact with them in a way that reflects their actual experience of the world. Based on your knowledge of your client’s PS and your understanding of your own PS, you can adjust your approach to ensure that your client gets the most out of the coaching experience.

To clarify, when we talk about adjusting your approach, we’re talking about fine tuning the words you use, as well as the manner in which you interact with them, including intensity, speed, emotional variability, and energy level. Each PS has its own comfort zone, sources of motivation and inspiration, and immediate turn-offs. Knowledge of all of these things can be crucial in catalyzing the kind of results the client is looking for.

Knowledge of the client’s PS can help you to interact in ways that will promote clear communication and avoid stylistic conflict. It is, in effect, meeting your client halfway –

so that even though you do not see the world the way they do, you have the tools to acknowledge and respect their worldview as valid.

By learning to adjust your approach to accommodate each of the six innate Perceptual Styles, you’ll see your effectiveness as a coach grow exponentially. It is, after all, simply human nature to respond to those who speak our language, and interact in the ways we’re most comfortable, even when we’re seeking significant change in our lives, be it professionally or personally.

About the Author: 

Lynda-Ross Vega: A partner at Vega Behavioral Consulting, Ltd., Lynda-Ross specializes in helping entrepreneurs and coaches build dynamite teams and systems that WORK. She is co-creator of Perceptual Style Theory, a revolutionary psychological assessment system that teaches people how to unleash their deepest potentials for success. For free information on how to succeed as an entrepreneur or coach, create a thriving business and build your bottom line doing more of what you love, visit www.YourTalentAdvantage.com