Need A Website?

• Do you want clients to find you through a Google search?
• Do you want to dump your webmaster?
• Are you a start up business and need an inexpensive website?

You need a blog! And, you can have a blog in 90 minutes, or less! Debra Simpson, Syndicating Your Content, is holding her monthly webinar on building a WordPress blog on Wednesday, March 17th.

Blogging is here to stay and business blogging builds your online visibility.  It can be inexpensive, can build search engine traffic, and can position you as an expert in your field.

Learn how you can build a blog in 90 minutes or less and how marketing your business through blogging has tremedous value by helping your clients find your information.

My Life Tees

The San Diego Business Showcase is being held Thursday, March 11, 2010 at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. The event is sponsored by several of the local Chamber of Commerces and Business Associations in San Diego County.

I spoke with Scott Ashton, Oceanside Chamber of Commerce and Colm Kelly, Smarter Small Business about the expo on North San Diego Business At Large. They shared some of the details of the afternoon, including the drive through free electronic recycling at the event.

I’ll be there for the Tweet Up.  Will you??

North San Diego Business At Large

North San Diego Business At Large
Show Notes: February 26, 2010

My guests for the first half of the show were Scott Ashton, The Oceanside Chamber of Commerce and Colm Kelly, Do Better Business, one of the sponsors who shared the upcoming San Diego Business Showcase on March 11, 2010.

My second guest will be Mia Roseberry, Wounded Warrior Homes, to talk about transitional housing for our North San Diego Veterens.

North San Diego Business At Large

North San Diego Business At Large
Show Notes:  February 19, 2010

Dan Boe, Inner-Fire Presentations, shared the six deadly mistakes we make in our sales conversations. They include:

1. Not getting the commitment up front.
2. Relying on product knowledge.
3. Being a free consultant.
4. Not having a process.
5. Trying to beat the buyer at his/her own game.
6. Selling features & benefits.

Dan offers sales courses which can be found at his site, Be The Fire, and has been a previous guest of North San Diego Business At Large (episode page).

Open Ended Questions

Ask Open-Ended & Clarifying Questions

Don’t work so hard on your next presentation, client meeting, or employee conversation. Certainly come prepared. But start by asking open-ended questions to target the needs of your listener or audience. It allows for multiple responses in the listeners owns language.

Repeat back what you heard using similar words from what what expressed. Then ask “Is what I said what you meant?” and adapt your style and response to meet their expectations. It will encourage a meaningful response that targets results without judgment, instead of driving, strong-arming, or pushing your own agenda. It will also demonstrate active listening skills while avoiding projecting, fixing, or telling.

Examples of open-ended or clarifying questions:

• “What’s the most important thing you’d like to get from me, or this meeting?”
• “How would you like me to provide you with feedback or information?”
• “Describe for me how you did….”
• “Tell me a time when you demonstrated….”
• “What would it look like if… (you tried the opposite)?”
• “What if the opposite were true?”
• “How can I support you?”
• “What would success look like?”
• “What did you intend as the outcome?”
• “How much time did the project work take?”

As a Business Coach, Ken brings more than 25 years of diverse local and international experience that business, visionaries and individuals trust to help achieve amazing success. He has helped small to mid-size business, and has managed large scale organizational shifts for Fortune 500 companies.

Our Digital World

While we may live in the technological and digital world, we’ve become more and more disconnected to the personal approach in building business relationships. While we need to use technology to make ourselves more efficient and productive, it shouldn’t replace the human, personal touch to build better business relationships.

The question becomes how do you use technology and still be personal at the same time to build solid relationships in business? Your database is the one central hub that allows you to use technology as an efficient way to reach out at a personal level and communicate with those you’d like to stay connected to.

The challenge for most business professionals is how to use their database and organize their database to relate personally. Choosing a database system becomes a little confusing today, as there are many choices to select from. All systems have pros and cons associated with their ease of use, training, costs and application. The system you choose needs to allow you to do the following:

• Ability to enter basic contact information and track and sort via name, address, phone, city,state and email.
• Ability to enter and sort by the title and function of your key contacts and relationships.
• Ability to categorize your contacts according to specific types (client, prospect, referral source, distributor, contact, supplier, key relationships, connections of influence, etc.).
• Ability to segment your contacts and give your relationships a hierarchy of their importance to you and your business (best clients, hot prospects, most important referral sources, A-B-C-D,etc.)
• Ability to provide a field of information as to how you met the relationship or how the contact came to know you and was entered into the database.
• Ability to track and profile personal information and preferences to build and enhance the relationship (birthdays, spouse and family information, personal preferences, hot buttons, likes and dislikes).
• Ability to code, track and measure prospects through the sales channel and pipeline.
• Have a calendaring system to pinpoint follow up dates, follow through and action items.
• Ability to make notes on items of importance to build and connect with relationships over time.
• Ability to group and categorize contacts into other sections that allow you to customize your message to an array of groups and associations.
• Ability to set up recurring touch points to keep connected with contacts and relationships.
• Ability to keep track of referral partners and strategic alliances for referrals and connections.
• Ability to use an integrated email-send-system that complies with the CAN-SPAM Act for blasting out permission based email communication.

Whatever system you choose needs to help you relate and communicate in a systematic and organized fashion. I always tell my clients that you need to have a system in how you communicate, interact and engage with your contacts, but never let them know they are part of a system to staying in touch.

Added by Debra Simpson…check here for information on email services…..

North San Diego Business At Large

North San Diego Business At Large
Show Notes: February 12, 2010

Today I spoke with Sue Crum, the R.E.D. team, about her work with Jack Canfield in helping people get moving towards their dreams.

Sue Crum

She is currently one of less than 75 people world-wide selected by Jack Canfield to help others implement positive changes in their lives so that they can get on to the life they imagine.

Sue is passionate about lifelong learning and inspiring others to create the life and the space they deserve.

She works with clients individually and in groups speaking about clearing up the roadblocks that sometimes hold us back.

North San Diego Business At Large

North San Diego Business At Large
Show Notes: February 5, 2010

My guest was Melanie Young, Back Alley Tours.

Back Alley Tours is a 90-minute walking tour through downtown San Diego’s historic Gaslamp district.

Before a 1912 vice raid, this district was known as the Stingaree. Dozens of brothels and saloons greeted visitors as they disembarked from the Fifth St. Horton Pier—now the site of the San Diego Convention Center.

Police looked the other way—that is, they looked right out the window of Police Headquarters, which was smack dab in the middle of the Stingaree.

All this changed when San Diego’s citizens decided to host the 1915 Panama Expo. And at least some of the city’s 40,000 citizens asked: what do we do about the Stingaree?

Find out which of your favorite downtown buildings once hosted ladies living “the sporting life,” which street created the district’s official “Boundary” and where local Asian and African-American families found ways to survive and thrive, often right next door to the most notorious saloons.

Twitter

Have you taken a class on Twitter somewhere and still don’t understand how to use it, let alone how to set it up?

Let Debra Simpson, Syndicating Your Content, help you. This “hands on” workshop is just for you. You will actually be working on your Twitter account. Don’t wait any longer, get the “hands on” help you need today!

On Wednesday, February 10, 2010 from 10am to 12pm PT (1pm to 3pm E T) you can get the hope you need to:

• Set Up Your Account
• Customize Your Background
  Using Photoshop for Your Background
  Using Ready Made Backgrounds
• How To Get Followers
• Twitter Services and Directories
• Twitter Strategies

North San Diego Business At Large
Show Notes: January 29, 2010

On this episode of North San Diego Business At Large TC Leary, TLC Estate Jewlery, and I discussed how she’s using social media to leverage her business online.

TLC Estate Jewelry buys and sells estate related jewelry, sterling silver items, collectables and more at her store front in Oceanside, as well as participating in shows throughout Southern California.