In my last article I wrote about the importance of maintaining your resume at times when you don’t expect to need it and this article is related and about maintaining your business connections. Its related at least from the perspective that you don’t know when you will ever need to count on your business connections and that if you hope to get help from them at the time you need but have never made the effort to maintain them, then you won’t get very far.  Connections in business are just as valuable as your resume and skills and we’ve all heard the saying, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know!”  Business connections are often a way to find new opportunities, new jobs and to get the support and help you need at times when it is desperately needed.  You cannot get that if you don’t maintain your business connections first, so here are some tips how to do that in your career.

Build your Connections

Building your connections means that you make extra effort to meet people, get to know them and to build a relationship with them beyond just the connection itself.  Unfortunately this is often a lot harder than it seems.  The world of blogging and social media (for those of you that are familiar) seem like this is easy to do with friends, followers and every other type of connection and RSS feeds that are out there.  This is where it SEEMS easy.  These types of connections are very shallow and not really all that helpful for either party involved.  What is needed is more effort to build the connection into a real relationship.  This can definitely be done in these social media systems but it takes more effort than secretly following someone to have a valuable connection with them.

Build connections by communicating both ways, learning about each other and by offering your.  Provide value to them and ensure that value is at a personal level. In the face to face business world this requires real relationships to develop and some interest on both parties to stay involved.

Another important thing with building connections is to no limit the connections you do build and develop.  In the world of work a network of connections can easily lead or branch out in ways you would never of expected.  A friend of your caretaker, the uncle of a hairstylist, an old school roommate’s new girlfriend, any of these people could add a value connection to your network which is exactly why you should never limit who you develop connections with.  In fact, it is important that you purposefully diversify your business connections and make an effort to branch outside your direct work circles because of these amazing opportunities that do come about via people you would least expect it to.
Give First Without Expectations
The easiest way for you to ensure others want to stay in touch and connected with you is to offer to help them or provide value to them if they should ever need it.  If you give first to the relationship more often than not you will end up having the same in return.  You can’t expect anything in return though because if you want to true give value to others, you ought to do it so they get more out of the relationship than you do.  At least they need to feel that way and be offered a chance for that.  If you do this and give first to a relationship it is quite likely you can build a strong connection with that person and that connection will last.

Keep Track of Your Connections

Building a few connections is easy without any system or methods for tracking.  However, you should be growing your known connections every month and so you will quickly find yourself needing to keep track of connections.  There are many options here and tools available for tracking.  You can use just an address book (paper or electronic) as long as it can add notes to each entry.  You might also want to combine your address book with a calendar to help schedule some and remind you of certain connections.  A customer relationship management (CRM) software is another excellent way to track your connections.

I find that one of the most important things with tracking connections is knowing when your last contact was and if there were any special discussions or actions that came about since or as a result of that last contact.  A regularly scheduled phone message or quick note on email is a simple task that is easy to schedule in any calendar or CRM software.

Ideally, you then continue to contact people that you haven’t frequently contact and just let them know you were thinking about them and wanted to stay in touch and that they are welcome to ask or contact you if they need anything from you.  Obviously you will not be able to fulfill any request but its the offer that counts the most.  It’s that offer that carries a lot of weight in the relationship with a business connection.

Rely on your Connections

If and only if you have had your connections for some time and that you have given first your offer of help to them, will you ever be able to rely on your connections.  Relationships need to work both ways and if you’ve made an effort to develop them, then you can much more easily rely on them.  Ask your connections for help if you need it. Get them to help you find a new position or to offer assistance or advice in a role you are struggling in.  Whatever the need is, if you’ve built your connections and put some time in yourself first, then you can always rely on them in your own time of need.  It’s an amazing feeling to know you have business connections who support you and help you out when the time arises.

Additional Tips

Obviously, there are some tips mentioned already about how to best build your business connections, here are those summarized with a few additional ideas.  I’d love to see any comments of additional tips to build your connections at a deeper level than your friend count in Facebook.  Please share your thoughts on this as well!

• Schedule time for weekly contact to your connects
• Use the phone or face to face whenever possible over electronic messaging, its more personal
• Offer yourself for help or advice when the chance arises with your connections
• Make at least one new connection per week
• Follow up with EVERY connection you have at least every 6 months, some more frequently
• Keep a diverse set of connections, it will expand the opportunities available

Posted by Mike King under Business | 11 Comments »

If there is one thing that people can probably recognize during a recession over anything else, it’s that anyone could find themselves out looking for work without warning.  This fact is one that simply reinforces the ideas in this article but I can’t urge enough that this has nothing to do with good or bad times and has everything to do with being responsible for your own career.  That is why you should always develop a great resume, a reference resume and be ready to use it on demand.  The last thing

Don’t Wait Until You Need a Resume

Whether you have been working at the same company for 10 years or have changed jobs every 6 months or are out of work, the best thing you can do to keep more career options open is to develop a great resume.  A resume is the tool that gets you an interview and it’s that all so important first impression of you.  Many people make the mistake of thinking that the resume is not that important and that it’s the interview that really matters, while that may be true for getting an offer, it isn’t true for getting that first call for an interview in the first place and so if you don’t get called, it will never do you any good.  The resume and cover letter are the first step, the interview the second and the negotiation is the third.  Each are all important and should be handled separately and carefully with any job search.

So don’t wait until you need a resume before you ever put any time into it.  Your resume is one of several of your career tools and it needs to be maintained to get the most out of it.  At any point in your career, you could come across a surprising layoff or cutback or a new job opportunity even if you are happy where you are.  It’s best to be prepared for that and have a ready and waiting resume that is up to date.  Put some time in a few times a year to review your accomplishments and update the content you have on your resume.  This is especially important if you have been with the same company for some time.  Updating your resume frequently will help you to capture your best accomplishments as your position at that company has progressed and it is a lot easy to think back over the last few months than it is over the last few years.

Resume Content

You should always have a resume to use as reference with all of you accomplishments and jobs over your entire career.  You use this as a reference since it will contain much more than you ever should deliver to a hiring company.  Keep a reference copy for yourself with all the detail you could ever need and then when you deliver a resume for a particular job, you have content you can pick and choose from that is most applicable to that job you are seeking.  The resume you actually deliver should always be tailored for the job, with relevant accomplishments and positions listed and nothing more.  As a hiring manager who has reviewed literally hundreds (maybe thousands) of resume’s I’ve seen that far too many people include a generic resume with all of their experience and no attention or focus on the most relevant points and experience.

Keep your resume short (1 page or 2 at the most) with specific points under each experience time frame that demonstrates the qualities expected for the role you are seeking.  Your points should always be based on the results you got and the accomplishments you had in doing the related tasks, don’t waste any space listing what the responsibilities were.  An interviewer or hiring manager is much happier learning about your responsibilities by seeing what you accomplished with those responsibilities.  Those accomplishments should be the areas you can talk about in the interview as well and will ensure you stand out from the competition.

Don’t put character traits or a description of yourself on your resume.  If you can’t prove it from the results and accomplishments you list, it won’t be believed anyway.  Saying that you are a hard working dedicated employee who loves to excel in their work and deliver results towards the goals of the organization is completely useless on a resume. Let your experience, references and interview demonstrate that for you.

Customizing a Resume for a Job

An objective is a great item to include on your resume, but ONLY if it is specific to the job being sought, for example fitted wardrobes.  Trust me, nothing kills a candidates chances more than a vague objective proving they don’t know what they want.  Either make your objective specific to each job that you apply at or don’t include one.  A specific objective shows confidence and demonstrates the candidate is looking for the right job, not just any job they can get, which is very important if you want to stand out from the competition.

Next, your work experience and detail or summary points within each should be selected carefully for each job.  As mentioned above you should make your points about accomplishments and results in each role you’ve had and then pick those according to the role you are applying for. Ideally, your reference resume after you’ve spent time building it up with 10-20 accomplishments and results will leave you with a great set of items to choose from.  If you are applying for a technical role, pick the technical points that most demonstrate your abilities to succeed in that area.  If it’s for a leadership position then pick the points that show accomplishments where you have influenced a team or helped others to perform well in your previous work.  Select only 4 or 5 of your most appropriate points for each position.  You can leave an impression that that covers only a small amount of your accomplishments (which should be true anyway) by titling your experience areas according to the job as well.

For example, if you are applying for a technical writer position, then label your experience section of your resume as “Technical Writing Experience” and labels your points or details as a summary of your accomplishments.  This leaves you with more to share if you are selected for an interview.

Additional Thoughts

Keep in mind most resumes are only looked at for a minute or less and so you don’t want anyone reading or even glancing over things that are not relevant and that is why you should only include the best examples and experience you have. If they like what they read, you’ve done your job and this will make you much more likely to get an interview.

Posted by Mike King under Business | 12 Comments »

This article is part of a series about the 7 ages of a business, an entrepreneur perspective, initially published at eDragonu.ro . The remaining 6 articles are published as guest posts on 6 other fine personal development and business blogs. You will find links to them at the end of this article.

Time For A Change

Exhaustion is by far the most difficult stage to accept from an entrepreneur perspective. Exhaustion happens when your market is so crowded that you can barely keep your profit and clients, when your employees can switch instantly from you to your competition (and vice versa), and when the market share is calculated in fraction of percents.

Exhaustion is usually the natural consequence of leadership. Every process in the world is a cyclic one and business can’t be an exception. After a high rise, a lower altitude will follow, after a huge inspiration, expiration will follow. These are metaphors for a rather harsh reality: during this stage your efforts will seem huge and your reward almost inexistent. It’s extremely difficult to accept exhaustion especially after the leadership stage when everything seemed to happen effortless.

From an entrepreneur standpoint, the exhaustion stage is much a like an old, small shirt. It simply doesn’t look good on you. You grew up and your shirt isn’t fitting anymore. Takes time to understand and accept that because we humans have a tendency to attach to our past images. An entrepreneur is often identifying himself with his business and can’t accept its decline. I know I did this mistake.

What To Avoid

Although you reached the end of the journey, there are still some things you can do to make it worse than it need to be. Here’s what I found better to avoid.

Salvage

The first reaction at this stage is trying to salvage your business. Although you came through all the stages, from enthusiasm to leadership, it seems that things aren’t running quite smoothly as before, so, you need to change something, you need to save your business. Well, you can’t. At least, you can’t go back to the leadership stage. Trying to salvage the business will often lead to risky solutions and will make it more unstable than before. Salvage will do more harm than good at this stage. The salvation process is mostly at the entrepreneur’s psychological level, the business is following a normal pattern.

Depression

That’s serious. Depression is one of the most common consequences for an entrepreneur reaching the exhaustion stage. You’re so overwhelmed with guilt and frustration, you’re trying so hard to come back on the game, you’re feeling so sad because the leadership days are over, that your psychological circuits can break. Depression is pretty common among entrepreneurs, although the images of entrepreneurs aren’t showing it. And it’s in the final stage of a business that is most likely for the depression to appear. Well, be prepared.

Conclusions

Jumping to conclusions is also one of the most common mistakes in the exhaustion stage of a business. Been there, done that, I don’t want to do it anymore. You’re analyzing your success level by the current business level. If the business is going so slow, you tend to think your success is not for real. That’s jumping to conclusion. You forgot how much you accomplished so far and tend to minimize your efforts. This is why is so important to assess your business experience during the leadership stage. Exhaustion is natural, but so is leadership, so stick with leadership and just accept exhaustion.

What To Do

Every crisis is in fact an opportunity. The business exhaustion phase is usually a powerful trigger for several really liberating activities. Here are some of them.

Exit

During the exhaustion stage and entrepreneur is almost forced to make an exit. I’m not talking about an investor or manager perspective here, which might be completely different, but about the entrepreneur’s desire to ignite things, to start something for scratch, to create. Exhaustion stage is like the click for a new adventure. I never met any serious entrepreneur who “survived” an exhaustion stage. Keep in mind that an “exit” can be done in million ways: you can sell all, just a part, remain investor, silent partner, etc.

Delegate It Big Time

If you’re not going to sell, which is highly improbable, the next best thing is to delegate it big time. Find somebody to run the business for you. It could be a person, another business (like in integrating your business with another one) it can be a group, it can be anything, as long as it gives you the freedom to start again. Delegating is not “exit”, if you’re delegating the business you’ll still have to exert some control over it, but at least you won’t be taking it as serious as before. Delegating wasn’t an option for me, after I hit the exhaustion stage I decided the best thing for me was to sell it completely. Your mileage may vary.

Accept It

That’s the most difficult yet most rewarding step you can take during this stage. Accepting that your business, your initial idea, has hit a certain level and it won’t go further will open your eyes to new roads. You can’t really run again if you don’t accept that you finished something, there will always be some lose ends that will make your running slow. Just accepting that you’ve done everything was to be done and you’re ready to start something new will be a great gift for yourself. Acceptance is the door to your new adventures. Entrepreneurship is not about money, it never was, it’s all about adventure.

Run Again

That’s the final stage of your business. It was a great journey. You started with enthusiasm, continued with a lot of trust and naivety, become attentive and then hit the maturity level. With courage and inspiration you expanded beyond your imagination and finally become a leader. It was an incredible journey.

There is only one thing that could level with that experience. And that is your next journey.

***

You can find the remaining 6 ages of your business on these fine personal development and business blogs:

• The Enthusiasm Business Age @ Attraction Mind Map
• The Naivety Business Age @ SmallBizBee
• The Attention Business Age @ Advanced Life Skills
• The Maturity Business Age @ Steven Aitchinson
• The Expansion Business Age @ Rat Race Trap
• The Leadership Business Age @ My Wife Quit Her Day Job

Guest Author:Dragos Roua is passionate about success, and he blogs at DragosRoua to share his insights about life’s many lessons and his travels and discoveries within it.  You can subscribe to his blog with his RSS feed here or catch him on Twitter @dragosroua

Posted by Mike King under Business | 16 Comments »

Strategy is an interesting topic and certainly not an uncommon one in business when it comes to planning, decisions and organizational leadership.  I am going to explore some pieces of strategy, how to develop and utilize a strategy and also extend that to other walks of life.

Timing Strategy

Strategy is all about the future and planning for things to come.  Or is it?  Well, I think it is more than that.  Strategy certainly has the future in mind but much of strategy is about executing a plan and the methods behind executing that as well.  It is about timing and controlling decisions to follow a plan at the right points.  The timing of strategic maneuvers is often the most important point of strategic plan and unfortunately, timing is also the thing that gets in the way the most of following a strategy successfully.  Things come up, issues occur, crisis hits and needs to be tended to, there just always seems to be another urgent thing requiring your attention and time before you can get to delivering on that strategy.

Strategy often seems like its counter-intuitive with urgent day to day ongoing work.  If that is the case, I say then you have either the wrong strategy or the wrong work.  Strategy shouldn’t be something that requires alignment of the planets to find the time to work on, it should be built into your day, your tasks and a regular part of your time spent.

Developing a Strategy

In order to develop strategy so that it is timed as part of your regular tasks instead of a wishful “nice to have” then you need to develop it so it aligns with expectations and so you can align your focus at least in some part to that strategic work.

Developing a strategy requires that you step back from these all too common urgent fires and things you seem to “have to do” and look at where you want to develop yourself, your relationship, your business and career.  It requires you to look at plans from a future perspective and to consider the aspirations you have and what are the steps and plans needed to get there.  Once of the tools I’ve learned at a recent conference for strategic planning is called SOAR analysis.  It stands for:

• Strengths
• Opportunities
• Aspirations
• Results

Developing a strategic plans works well by examining each of these to ensure they are included.  Stop and ask yourself questions about each of these areas in your work or life and contemplate the answers so they can be used to formulate a plan.

Strengths

Utilize the strengths you have to ensure you are involved in areas you are competent and able.  I certainly don’t mean to limit yourself, as there is always value in stepping out of your comfort zone but strategy should be based on the strengths you have as that is your most likely area to advance the furthest as well.

Opportunities

This areas is to examine where there is a chance to progress and excel at.  These areas might be to expand existing strengths into new areas or markets and they might be to branch into new research or areas in life that are not yet ventured into.  An opportunity will offer some promise of success at the cost of some challenge to get there and is often what a strategy is formulated on.

Aspirations

Or as Jim Collins put it in his classic, Good to Great , big harry audacious goals.  These are the areas that help formulate a strategy from some dream or vision of a more idealistic situation that is desirable and sought after.  Aspirations don’t need to be future minded, they simply need to into account the dreams and ideas of what a better picture looks like, or the perfect situation for your life and career and company. They are the things you wish to happen and don’t need to be realistic or even reasonable.  They help to steer you in a direction when developing a strategic plan and to not loose sight of the dream.

Results

This area is often over-looked and it specifically helps to focus on what exactly would be going on in the way of deliverables, results and achievements if you were already in the position of the dream or visions behind a strategic plan being in place.  What is happening and what results you expect when you execute the strategic plan and successfully achieve it.  These results set the stage to include specifics in a plan so it can be more easily measured and tracked.  The results are also a promise of what is to come if you accomplish the plan.  Results are best if they are ongoing results as well, not time limited.  You don’t want a strategic initiative to immediately end when you achieve the results.  You want to envision and expect that you will continue to get those results.

Simplify Your Strategy

One of the things that often is the doom of a strategic plan is that it isn’t realistic and broken down into simple actions.  It’s often described or outlined as some lofty ambition that seems impossible to achieve and there is no obvious way to attach to the plan and become a part of it.  This is why simplifying it necessary so it can easily be understood, accepted and engaged into.  Strategy needs to become a part of normal tasks and it definitely needs to simplified so that it won’t suffer the urgent distractions offset that so easily kill strategy and meaningful tasks.  A simple strategy is one that becomes regular, easy and constantly makes visible the value and progress towards that strategic endpoint.  This may be by describing it in a way that connects it with your existing work or by making known the advantages of putting meaningful work before mundane and urgent tasks that occur.

Changing your mindset to follow a more strategic set of maneuvers can be very difficult.  For that, you must simplify it down to easier tasks and smaller pieces so that you’re not overwhelmed.

Strategy Day by Day

With a well understood strategy and having it broken down into smaller pieces you can then examine how to build strategic tasks into each and every day.  Strategy should not be separated as a seldom activity or event, it needs to fit into regular day to day actions so it becomes natural.  Strategy in business needs to involve all employees in some way and engage them by being part of their work.  For your own strategy in life or career, you need to ensure you have work that fits in some way your strategic plan so that you are working toward that accomplishment on a regular basis.

If your strategic actions are truly most important, its really a good idea to do them first.  Work away at them before anything else and put off the urgent fires until you have done something towards your strategic goals.

Strategy Answers Tough Questions

This section goes hand in hand with fitting strategy in day by day but it specially about controlling and responding to questions with your strategy in mind.  Distractions are going to come up, fires will never go away completely but you can respond to them differently.  What if you use your strategy to provide the answers to tough questions on actions plans, firefighting and urgent requests.  Use the strategy to respond to others when they request your time or service.  Ask them or for their help to decide if it is really more important than your critically important strategic plans and why it is more important that that work if something seems urgent.

I’ve personally learned that nearly nothing is as urgent as it seems and I’ve been lucky to develop a habit of analyzing requests with a longer term mindset.  I’m a product architect, researcher and product development manager in my day job and those areas tie in heavily with strategic plans so I’ve been able to adopt a strategy first attitude and response system.  I rarely put attention to urgent requests because my main work strategies are about the quality products I’m involved in building and quality never comes fast or without solid planning.  Obviously not everyone has this same strategy and some may actually have a strategy around responding quickly in their role so then responses and expectations change but it can still be done with a strategic factor in answering those tough questions of what and when to do things.  The short answer for any of these tough questions when a well drafted strategic plan exists is to always put the things that align best with a strategy before other new or urgent items.  This can only be done when a solid strategy exists, it is well understood and you are willing to execute it consistently, instead of just making it and not then actually following it.

Posted by Mike King under Business | 11 Comments »

I heard a very interesting suggestion by a colleague at work recently about the value you suggest when selling a product or closing a deal.  The suggestion was this:

Do not thank someone for their business when you close a sale, complete your service or sell some product.  Instead congratulate them for their investment and thank them for their time they spent with you.

The reasoning behind this is that thanks often implies that you got the better end of the deal.  When someone gives you a gift, you say thanks.  When they left you go first and offer you something, you say thanks.  Doing this with a sale can subconsciously imply you got the better end of the deal.  You don’t a customer to think that so you are better off congratulating them for the investment they make.  This transfers the idea that THEY got the better end of the deal and leaves them feeling they have something now more valuable than the money in exchange for it.

When I think back now to all the things I’ve purchased and how I felt when buying them, I actually do remember several people how congratulated me on my purchase instead of thanking me and I still remember them in my mind even years later.  I never quite realized or registered why that might be so, and this simple suggestion has now brought that to light for me.  I hope you get some value from it and may also be able to use it in your transactions you make with others.  It’s a great attitude to have and really does portray more value is transferred than when you are thanked for the business.

Posted by Mike King under Business | 7 Comments »

I hear so many debates with employees and writers about how hard they work or how hard they work compared to others.  Everyone has a a different meaning for what working hard really is.  What is yours?

It is NOT Working More?

The first thing here is to explore a couple of areas that it is NOT.  Working hard to me is not about working more or longer hours.  This of course has it’s use from time to time but I don’t consider someone who works more on something necessarily working any harder.  If you work a 35 hour week or a 70 hour week, perhaps you get the same amount of work actually completed?  Who was working harder?  Many people think the person working 70 hours is working harder.  Not to me but again, depends how to look at things.  Working more hours to get the same thing done in some ways is working harder but clearly this is undesirable.  Who doesn’t want to get the same amount done in less time, after all?

Working Harder is Really Working Smarter

So, to work harder from the example above you need to work at the right things to get the same thing done in less time.  If you are still producing the same amount of output in less time, then you are working on smarter things that deliver more per hour.  This is what working harder is to me.

Less Time is Really Working Harder

Even though it often seems that more time on something is useful, it’s not.  That is just a recipe asking for waste and overwork for no good reason.  A bit of extra time spend to figure out the right things to work on and the items with the most payoffs per hour spent can make a huge impact on your time put into working.  This can enable you to actually have less time working while getting the same amount done. This is known as the 80 / 20 rule or the Pareto principle where 80% of your output comes from 20% of the actual time working at that.  Use this to your advantage and start working harder only by spending less time on the right things!

What Attitude Do You Have About Working Harder

• Do you think working harder is working longer hours?
• Do you think working harder is about working smarter in less hours?

What attitude do you portray about hard work with your friends and colleagues?  Do they know what working hard means to you?  Can you leave at the end of a 8 hour work day feeling satisfied that you truly did work hard through it?  Please share some of your attitudes about working hard, I’d love to know what others think about this topic?

Posted by Mike King under Business | 36 Comments »