Jeffrey Gitomer

Santa Claus and Google. The same or just a coincidence?

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After nearly 60 years of a wavering belief in Santa Claus, I have come to a major AHA! Santa Claus is actually Google.

Think about it:

  • Google knows when you’re sleeping.
  • Google knows when you’re awake.
  • Google knows if you’re bad.
  • Google knows when your good.
  • Google has lists, and she checks them twice.
  • Google knows who’s naughty.
  • Google knows who’s nice.
  • And Google reads all your letters!

Holy cow! How can this be? It sure clears up a lot of mystery. I’ve always wondered how Santa Claus knew all this stuff. How did he find my house? How did he know what I wanted? It turns out Google knows everything about everyone. Especially you.

  • Google knows where you live.
  • Google knows where everyone lives.
  • Google knows what you want.
  • And Google can make it into your home and everyone else in the world’s home on Christmas Eve.

Pretty cool, huh?

Finally, the real of Santa Claus is exposed! The Clark Kent of our time has been revealed. THE QUESTION IS: How has Santa, er, I mean Google, rated you this year? Is she going to bring you everything on your wish list?

And maybe a bigger question is: how are you taking advantage of the Santa Claus elements Google presents to help you build your personal brand and reputation.

Actually, I wonder if your Christmas wish list contains a wish for you to have a better personal brand next year? Or a better reputation next year? Or a higher Google ranking next year? Or maybe to occupy the entire first page of Google next year? Probably not.

Your Christmas list probably contains material things like an iPad, or a smartphone, or an Xbox, or some clothing. Too bad.

Like Santa Claus, mother Google keeps track of you all year long. You can’t just all of a sudden become nicer at Christmastime! You have to be nice all the time. You have to be good all the time. You have to be ethical all the time. And you have to take reputation-building actions all the time in order for mother Google to look upon you favorably.

And just so we understand each other, mother Google doesn’t make a list and check it twice. She already has the list, you are already on the list, and that list gets checked every day.

If you’re trying to harvest the bounty that Google offers, the free bounty that Google offers, you have to take the appropriate actions that will move you up the list, and keep adding to the list on a consistent basis.

  • Write something and post it online.
  • Have an article published someplace.
  • Tweet something meaningful.
  • Speak someplace.
  • Join a business group.
  • Lead a civic group.
  • Participate in a charity.
  • Start a personal website.
  • Tweet something profound.
  • Create a blog and post an entry every day.
  • Post on your Facebook business page.
  • Put a video up on your YouTube channel.
  • Do something noteworthy in your community.
  • Tweet something that helps others.
  • Invite people to your LinkedIn page.

Do all of these things consistently. Some daily. Some weekly. But each of them at least monthly. The key to building your Google reputation is consistent action, consistent writing, and consistent posting.

The week between Christmas and the New Year presents an amazing opportunity to any person who is B2B, and many B2C. It’s the time to make your plan for next year. The time to make your Christmas list is not December 1st, it’s January 1st. That’s the day you begin to earn your gifts from mother Google for the next year. Or not.

Okay, so Google may not really be Santa Claus. But the similarities are remarkable, and the results are the same. If you’re good, you get toys. If you’re bad, you get coal.

The reality is you have to be on the good side of Santa Claus, and you must be on the good side of mother Google.

How important is your Google ranking? If you want material things, a great Google ranking, a great Google personal brand, and a great Google ranking, and a great Google reputation will ensure that you get all the things on your list, and a new house, and a new car.

Happy, healthy, wealthy, family holiday and New Year!

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at salesman@gitomer.com.

The 7 Deadly Sins of Relationship Management

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From networking events to social networking sites, opportunities to ‘meet’ new connections abound. Exactly how do you make the most of every introduction? Let’s start with what not to do. Whether you associate the ‘seven deadly sins’ with medieval religious teachings or modern-day entertainment, they can be applied here. Build your reputation and your business by avoiding these seven deadly sins of relationship management:

Pride
If you don’t believe in you, who will? Self-promotion requires tact. Toot your horn too often or too loudly and all you can expect is a wave of unreturned messages and deleted connections. People are attracted to authenticity. Crafting a false image is a turnoff to all.

Solution: Share your accomplishments and the spotlight with those who contributed to your success. You might even score bonus exposure by reaching beyond your network.

[wcm_restrict]Greed
If your concerns are your only concerns, why should others care about you? But when you seek to meet others’ needs and do a great job, they’ll be more inclined to reciprocate. Reversing that sequence will surely prevent it.

Solution: Focus your messages and offerings on the interests and needs of your audience, not what you’re looking to promote.

Lust
If you’re too eager or lusting after the attention of others, your otherwise professional efforts can lead to a very unprofessional reputation. Nobody invites crossing the line of acceptable and professional efforts with that of becoming a pest revealing personal cravings over that of the others needs.

Solution: You can’t force someone to reciprocate. Do what you said you’d do or send what you promised and let the rest happen naturally.

Anger
If you read an email with unintended sarcasm or interpret a short missive as an angry one, you might be tempted to reciprocate in kind. The power of a smile and laughter can produce priceless and ever-expanding opportunities, but the consequences of discourtesy are immediately and potentially irreversibly destructive.

Solution: Consider communication carefully. Responding in anger can destroy your reputation and your relationships.

Gluttony
If you’re sending mass emails or group texts in an effort to save yourself time but at the expense of over-sharing information, you risk losing the right to be taken seriously. By default, ‘mass’ is mutually exclusive of ‘personal.’

Solution: Balance group messages for general announcements by inviting personal responses of interest.

Envy
If you’re building yourself up at the expense of others by putting them down, your need for the spotlight will backfire. Don’t focus on what others have or the connections others have made. Set your own relationship goals based on what you have to offer your network, not what you seek to gain from them.

Solution: Congratulate others on their successes instead of stewing on what you haven’t yet accomplished.

Sloth
If your efforts to connect or stay in touch border on the apathetic, you need to shape up, perhaps in more ways than one. A lack of drive and determination to ‘exercise’ meaningful connections will only result in relationship atrophy.

Solution: Schedule regular communication. It may be drudgery as the start of any exercise regimen can be, but positive results will prove worth the time and effort.

Each and every one of these sins is easy to fall prey to but just as easy to avoid. However, it does take conscious thought, determined actions, and purpose of focus toward others to realize optimal relationship value that rewards all parties all the time.

What is ultimately at stake here is development of your personal brand. Fundamentally, there is no value in being unlikable. Generally speaking, the complete antidote to the seven deadly sins is nothing more than simply being nice to all people all the time. In fact, some relationship experts estimated that simply being nice can result in a 30 to 40% increase in success over those people and/or companies that are not nice. Who ever thought that simply being nice could in fact be the very thing that completely sets you apart and distinct from everyone else, and helps pave your road to success?[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

Mike MuhneyCRM pioneer Mike Muhney, the co-creator of ACT! software, is CEO of mobile relationship management purveyor vipOrbit – the first relationship-centric contact manager solution enabling mobile business professionals to manage their contacts, calendar and client/customer interactions across Mac, iPhone and iPad platforms. He may be reached at www.VIPOrbit.com.

Chris Majer

6 Silent Productivity and Profitability Pitfalls, part 5 of 7

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Silent Killer #4: Worship of Information

In our rush to ‘modernize’ everything and make our enterprises more efficient, we have mistakenly come to believe that information is our most valuable commodity. But data and information are useless without human beings to interpret them. These days, computers can do just about anything – except think for themselves. But we have come to tolerate the illusion that the essential matters of work can be invented, managed, and sustained through the creation, storage, retrieval, display, and publication of information.

Contemporary information systems are blind to many of the key drivers of productivity and have consistently failed in their quest to integrate the diverse operations of a company. By making information the priority, we have lost sight of its fundamental purpose – to enable the people to effectively address the concerns of their customers.

[wcm_restrict]Rather than attempting to replace people, our IT systems, processes, and products should be aimed at enabling the human cooperation, collaboration, and innovation that are essential to growing a business. No matter how impressive or ‘efficient’ an IT system claims to be, it will never replace the passion, joy, creativity, and spontaneity of people – all of which are essential to generating competitive advantage.

As people deal with the inadequacies, breakdowns, and sterility of most modern information systems, they find themselves unavoidably generating waste and unproductive moods. In fact, workers report wasting an average 42 to 43 percent of their time on the computer due to frustrating experiences, according to a study by researchers from Towson University, the University of Maryland, and Carnegie Mellon University.

Shift Your Understanding

Rather than designing information systems to manage the movement and protect the security of information, we should be developing and continuously redesigning information systems that enable people to more effectively communicate with one another, coordinate their efforts, mobilize their resources, and take action.

For example, consider e-mail. What was invented as a means to replace the post office has now become the most common management tool in organizations. Rather than walking down the hall or picking up the phone to actually talk to our colleagues or employees, we have replaced conversation with impersonal electronic communication. It was never designed for that purpose and is, in fact, ill-suited to managing the complex web of commitments that are the organization.

Concerns for legacy systems and the defense of historical practices must not be allowed to limit the capacity for people to work together effectively. Currently this is the rule, rather than the exception. But a new generation of coordination tools is available, and the innovators of the world are using them.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

Chris Majer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Human Potential ProjectChris Majer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Human Potential Project, is the author of The Power to Transform: Passion, Power, and Purpose in Daily Life (Rodale), which teaches the strategies corporate, military, and sports leaders have used to positively transform themselves and their organizations in a way readers can adept to their own lives and professions. He may be reached at www.humanpotentialproject.com.

Does Your Business Have True Leaders?

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Every single employee is important in an organization, but there is nothing more vital than having leaders to drive change and manage day-to-day work. These leaders might be supervisors, managers or partners, but they are hugely important regardless of what department of the business they work in. So it is time to figure out whether your business has true leaders! If you feel there is room for improvement, here are a few ways you can change the tide:

Invest in leadership programs
The first thing you can do is to take advantage of leadership program benefits. There are many different programs run by trained professionals, so you should be able to find one that suits your style of doing business. Your staff will learn invaluable skills that will help them to move your business forward over the coming weeks, months and years. They might need to learn to be better at delegation, or they might need to break out of their shell and stop being so shy. Other people can be too direct, so for them it could be learning to tone down their personality when in an office environment. Either way, this is one of the best investments you could make for your team.

[wcm_restrict]Have more regular meetings
Once your team is operating with nominated leaders, it is your job to ensure that things flow easily without any major hiccups. Stay connected with your leaders, as they will be the ones who have an insight into what is going on in the business. You can organize regular meetings with all of the managers and supervisors, as well as having one-on-one meetings to find out about more specific issues and areas of interest. Try and schedule in these meetings so they are always in the diary; it is more helpful as people will be able to organize other meetings and work around them.

Reward staff when it is earned
When there are team members who are making a real difference, it can be a good idea to reward them. Whether this is a leader or someone who is shining under their influence, it is a great help to your organization. Perhaps you could think about holding an awards ceremony or recognition afternoon in honor of your most hardworking employees; this could be in conjunction with a promotion or even a pay rise where applicable.

Think about tomorrow’s leaders
These promotions are easier to do when you have considered tomorrow’s leaders, as your organization won’t stay still. People leave or get promoted into other positions, which opens up their jobs for people who are currently sitting under them in the company hierarchy. So if you have earmarked certain employees for promotions in the coming months, ensure they have the right training before they take up their new post. You could send them on the same leadership programs mentioned above, as well as making sure they can handle the extra responsibilities that they will inherit.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

From her 25 years in business, Elizabeth Hill aims to pass on knowledge and skills gained in that time through her writing. She loves walks in the countryside, spending time with family and friends, and is ever so ‘slightly’ addicted to coffee.

StrategyDriven Enterprises Partners with Xen Wireless to Form StrategyDriven Analytics, a Utility Industry Asset Management Blind Benchmarking Service

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StrategyDriven Enterprises LLC and Xen Wireless form StrategyDriven Analytics to provide utility industry executives and managers with asset management program benchmarking data supporting operational and investment decisions and fleet and individual plant performance assessments.
 
 
StrategyDriven Analytics LLCStrategyDriven Enterprises LLC and Xen Wireless announced the formation of StrategyDriven Analytics LLC to provide utility industry executives and managers with fleet and plant level asset management program benchmarking data. StrategyDriven Analytics combines StrategyDriven’s industry leading asset management and data analytics experience with Xen Wireless’s information technology and delivery expertise.

“Utility industry executives and managers face unprecedented challenges associated with aging assets, evolving regulations, and increasing budget pressures,” explains Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven’s Chief Executive Officer. “By providing these leaders with fleet and plant level asset management benchmarking data, we give them an additional perspective on which to make operational, investment, and performance improvement decisions.”

“We are excited about the opportunity to combine StrategyDriven’s utility industry experience with Xen Wireless’s technology expertise,” asserts Rob Reed, Xen Wireless’s Chief Operations Officer. “StrategyDriven Analytics will provide blind benchmarking data across a wide range of asset programs at the fleet and plant levels. Our system’s comparison capabilities will allow leaders to assess asset performance against similar utilities, peers within a geographic or interconnection grid region, and across the industry as a whole.”

StrategyDriven Analytics will provide utility industry leaders with an array of asset management program benchmarking data in the areas of:

  • Asset Health and Equipment Reliability
  • Online and Outage Work Management
  • Engineering Work Management
  • Plant Maintenance and Operations

About StrategyDriven

StrategyDriven provides executives and managers with the planning and execution advice, tools, and practices needed to create greater organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We believe a clear, forward-looking strategy, translatable to the day-to-day activities of all organization members, is critical to realizing success in today’s fast paced market environment. Not only does a compelling, well-executed strategy align individuals to common goals, it ensures those goals best serve the company’s mission.

At StrategyDriven, our seasoned business leaders deliver real-world strategic business planning and tactical execution best practice advice – a blending of workplace experience with sound research and academic principles – to business leaders who may not otherwise have access to these resources.

StrategyDriven refers to the family of organizations comprising StrategyDriven Enterprises, LLC. For more information, please visit www.StrategyDriven.com.

About Xen Wireless

Xen Wireless delivers high value, high impact, technology services and solutions to help our customers solve real world business problems.

Since 2000, Xen Wireless has provided services and solutions to many of the biggest names in Telecommunications market, including National Wireless Voice and Data Providers, Internet Service Providers, and Satellite Telecommunications providers.

Xen Wireless professional project managers, business analysts, systems analysts, and software engineers, are experts in Telecommunications Business Support Systems (BSS), Operations Support Systems (OSS), Network Management Systems (NMS), and Multi-Family WiFi Network Design, Implementation, and Operations. We have lead and participated in projects through all phases of the systems lifecycle from design to development to implementation and operations.

For more information about Xen Wireless, please visit www.XenWireless.com.