San Jose Entrepreneur Conference Part 1: Questions I Learned To Ask From John C Maxwell

June 2014, I attended an entrepreneurs conference in San Jose, California. My wife went with me and we turned it into a little learning getaway.

The headline (if you will) of the conference was John C. Maxwell. He’s an author of many books , primarily focusing on leadership. He’s also an accomplished speaker (I’ve witnessed this first hand now) entertaining and educating Fortune 500 companies, international government leaders, and many organizations.

Mr. Maxwell was promoting the book he released in 2014 entitled Good Leaders Ask Great Questions and shared advice on asking good questions and how asking good questions can help your business. I’d like to share some of the advice I captured:

• Ask good questions every day

• Take your mentors out to lunch. Don’t eat, ask questions
• Sample question:
• Who do you know that I should know?

• Be intentional about your questions

• Ask yourself good questions
• Sample questions:
• Am I investing in myself?
• What am I doing today to make myself a better leader tomorrow
• Am I a person of value? How? Why?
• Do I care about the people around me?
• Am I investing my time with the right people
• Do they have character?
• Do we have chemistry?
• Do they have capacity?
• Do they have commitment?
• Am I doing what I love and do I love what I do?
• Am I staying in my strength zone?
• Am I taking people to a higher level?
• Are they succeeding because of the way I’m leading?
• Am I developing leaders?
• Am I taking care of today?
• Am I taking time to think?
• Am I doing things right?
• Am I doing what’s right by my family?
• Am I doing what’s right by my friends?
• Am I doing what’s right by my values?

• Develop an action plan for the information you learn from the questions you ask. ACT!
• A – apply
• C – change
• T – teach

 Use these questions and ask new questions in order to stay focused on your success and whatever that means to you.

- D

Microsoft Convergence 2014

In 2014 I attended Microsoft's business technology conference, Covergence 2014. When I wasn't working the tradeshow floor I took in some of the presentations and parties that were part of the whole conference experience.

I was excited to see the Convergence 2014 Keynote Presentations. Keynote speakers included Kirill Tatarinov, executive vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions, Arianna Huffington, president and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group, and Biz Stone, co-inventor and co-founder of Twitter and co-founder and CEO of Jelly. Here are some tasty nuggets of technology entrepreneur advice I captured from these successful people:

1 - All businesses today, regardless of their industry are P2P (people to people) rather than B2B or B2C. We're entering the "era of the customer" and customers now expect to be able to interact with businesses quickly and through a variety of channels - Kirill Tatarinov.

2 - Online customer relationships have moved from observation only, to participation to full-on engagement - Arianna Huffington.

3 - Make meaningful connections with your partners and customers. Don't just make a business case for your software, solution or service, share how it actually helps people - Biz Stone.

I hope you can find a way to apply this advice to your tech company's model, messaging and conversations with your customers for engagement and success going forward.

- D

metabridge 2013

I was privileged to be asked to be the project manager for metabridge 2013. I was asked to be responsible for logistics on the ground in Kelowna, BC Canada where the 2-day tech retreat takes place.

metabridge is a powerfully positive experience for an entrepreneur. Whether you are lucky enough to be one of the top Canadian startups to be chosen and invited to attend or you need to pay to attend, you have to be in it and see it to “get it” and understand how the experience benefits you and your company.

metabridge offers many learning opportunities for entrepreneurs and there are opportunities to pitch your business to people that could potentially be game-changers for your business. Where the real value lies however, is in the opportunities you have to truly get to know people and build authentic relationships with like-minded professionals that could potentially help you and your company as you grow.

I was lucky enough to be closely involved with 2 such opportunities that were presented through events I helped organize and run during the retreat. They included:

The Bike ride and winery tour – where we rode bikes and toured a few of Kelowna’s award-winning wineries. During this event conversations between entrepreneurs, VC’s and investment companies were about anything but business. Future business relationships were being built based on shared experiences and conversations about bikes, the weather, the views and fine wine.

The Finale Party – where mutual interests around food, drinks, music and silly dance moves bring business associates together. This was also an opportunity for the amazingly creative and tech-savvy talented people working in and supporting Kelowna’s tech community to show-up en masse to rub shoulders with the tech companies and VIP’s participating in metabridge and show them why Kelowna is the best community for tech in Canada.

metabridge is a reminder that people do business with people and as much as metabridge has started conversations between companies and organizations that have hugely impacted some Canadian tech startups, those business partnerships may have developed over mutual passion for bike riding and wine.

Overall metabridge 2013 was an awesome event. The project team was flattered to get feedback from many of the tech companies and VIP’s participating in the event saying it was the best retreat in its 5-year history. After working closely with the metabridge team, helping make arrangements for all the venues and events that take place during the retreat and making sure metabridge VIP’s were transported to and from the airport for their flights, I can honestly say that I get it… I understand without a doubt the value metabridge delivers to Canadian entrepreneurs, to Canada and the host city, Kelowna. It’s an essential component with all the other incredible things that are happening to build a successful tech industry in Kelowna.

- D

Success?

I'm way behind on my reading, at least the reading material that I subscribe to that hits my inbox. I do my best to stay on top of it, but there are times where I'm more than a month behind. Take this article for instance - Want to be Extremely, Wildly, Radically Successful?. It was written by Joel Petersen, Chairman of JetBlue Airways and published more than a month ago on LinkedIn... but I'm sharing it now...

To summarize my understanding of Mr. Petersen's point in his article: there's a ton of articles out there (online) containing quick lists of things you need to do, almost presented as mere tweaks you can make to your daily life and be amazingly successful.

Mr. Petersen reminds us that all of these quick fix articles out there are the "Unplanned Offspring" of Stephen Covey's hugely successful book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Having worked with Mr. Covey, Mr. Petersen understands perhaps more than most what Mr. Covey was trying to communicate in his book. There are no quick lists or quick fixes to be more effective and therefore more successful. It takes hard work, it takes reflection and the understanding of oneself and the courage to make fundamental changes in oneself to be balanced and make the right choices in your personal life and professional life quickly and easily, almost subconsciously, because in the core of your being you know who you are and who you want to be and everything you do reflects that. Whew!... run-on sentence, I know... but you get my point.

Mr. Covey's book was passed to me by father. He read it when it was first published in the early 1990's and he was in his forties then. He passed it to me after he retired and I was in my forties. I read it and it had a profound impact on my life.

Mr. Petersen's article reminded again of how important that book is. It reminded me to make sure I continually come back to it and read it and practice it's teachings and pass it along to my kids... hopefully before they're forty :)

D

Boulder, Colorado: A Must Visit For A Tech Startup Entrepreneur

In 2013 I found myself working for a business technology developer... Full disclosure: my brother Kelly Powers worked there and recommended me for this position. It was a pleasure to be able to work with my brother while I worked for them.

I was excited when Kelly and I were asked to join the team in Boulder for a week in August. It was great opportunity to meet and work with the team there for a week. The trip to Boulder also offered an opportunity to see the tech startup community there that I had heard so much about first-hand and get a glimpse at what makes it so successful.

Boulder has the impressive distinction of being the top city for tech startups in the US. Prior to arriving there, I reached out to some friends on social media and they were kind enough to help connect me to people within Boulder’s startup community.

Most of our time in Boulder was spent working of course, but there were a couple of evenings where Kelly and I hit the town to check out Boulder’s startup scene. Here are some of the Boulder startup community highlights we experienced:

- Pitch to Developers. This meetup is for tech developers that are interested in getting involved in the creation of a startup, and for entrepreneurs that are looking for developers. Startups would pitch, answer questions and then setup in a corner of the room with snacks and beer and network with developers in the room. Get more information at www.pitchtodevelopers.com or www.meetup.com/pitch-to-developers .

Kelly inside the Pixel Space's new digs. Kelly was a rockstar in Boulder.

- Pixel Space Launch. Pixel Space is a startup that provides a residential experience complete with tons of geeky amenities, right in the heart of downtown Boulder. It’s a great looking space and a place I hope to stay when I visit Boulder in the future. They threw a fantastic party and we met some great people like Michael Dusing (@mdusing), Joe Sampson (@youngJsampson), Chris Hayes (@heizusan), Tim Williams (@timwilliamz) and Monika Wittig (@lan_monika). Check out www.pixelspace.co or @PixelSpaceCo on Twitter.

Kelly and I trying the 1 litre of beer they serve at the Bohemian Biergarten with Tim O'Shea in downtown Boulder... My recollection of observations and specific information around Boulder's startup community understandably gets a little fuzzy after this point :)

- Drinks, dinner and more drinks with Tim O’Shea (@tmoshea on Twitter). Among other things, Tim is the Events Chair for Boulder Startup Week and is incredibly connected to the community and entrepreneurs thriving there. He’s also incredibly generous with his time, knowledge and experience in Boulder. Tim gave us the lay of the land and introduced us to many of the people we met in Boulder.

I can’t say enough about the city of Boulder and its startup community and I can’t wait to go back. It's a town that must be experienced if you are an entrepreneur. You'll find every conversation with every person you meet to be positive and full of encouragement, support and advice.

D

Social Media as a CRM for Sales

Have you ever Googled "Social CRM for Sales"?

There's a lot of information on the subject, but I was little disappointed to find the CRM's dominating the search results not articles on how social media can be used. Let me explain...

Client / Customer / Contact Relationship Management (CRM) solution providers are desperately trying to integrate social media into their products. On a basic level, CRM's allow their users to connect a contact's Twitter and LinkedIn so the user can quickly link to those channels and do some social listening to potentially build a stronger relationship with that contact. Some are trying to go further. Have you ever considered turning this idea on its head... and use social media as your CRM?

First let me state that I love CRM's and have used various ones consistently for the last 6 years. They are an amazing tool for sales, managing leads and measuring what's in your sales pipeline. The following information is not being shared as a replacement for a CRM. It's simply another technique I've employed with some success.

I've been practising using social media as a CRM for sales for a few years now. Let me share what I've been doing and you can see if it is a technique that will work for you. It's quite simple and I've broken it out into the following steps. We'll use Twitter and LinkedIn as our social media tools in our Social CRM solution, but you could probably use Instagram and LinkedIn, Pinterest and LinkedIn or others. LinkedIn is where we end this journey typically as I explain below.

Step #1: Follow Leads on Twitter
Once I've found a company or person I want to work with, I do my best to find all of their social media channels. If they're on Twitter I start there. Twitter is ideal as you need no prior relationship with a person or a brand to start following them... it's not creepy... in fact it's expected. It's helpful also that you break the people / brands you're following into lists. This makes the next step easier.

Step #2: Engage
This may take some time but eventually the leads you're following on Twitter may say something or ask something through Twitter that you can contribute to. As with many things, timing is everything, but it's what we're expected to do on social media - engage, network, provide value, develop new relationships and expand our networks.

I like to use Twitter's lists. I choose a list of people / companies I want to engage with, review recent posts or tweets and if I can add value to a conversation, I'll jump in!

Here's an example of a conversation from the other night:

Now I don't know Tari and Tom Di Bello and they don't know me. But I LOVE Okanagan wine and Tom is one of the best winemakers in the region! I love the winery business and the stories and experiences they create with their brands and I've had the pleasure of working with a few great Okanagan wineries.

It's important to note that I didn't reach out to Tom and Tari to try to develop a business relationship with them. I reached out because I had some valuable information, insight and experience that might help them answer the question they posed. If a business relationship develops where I can help their business or another business in their network - great! If not, I was happy to help them with this question - that's it!

Step #3: Move Contacts to LinkedIn for Conversion
So, once you've engaged contacts on Twitter and you have developed a rapport, you can ask to add your contact to your LinkedIn network. LinkedIn, more than any other network, has been the best network for my business. I have established relationships with every connection and when I message a contact on LinkedIn to meet for a coffee, I always get a meeting.

This may ruffle some feathers out there, but if you and I don't know each other and you are trying to connect with me on LinkedIn - you're wasting your time and mine. LinkedIn is my special happy place where I only keep my most precious business contacts.

LinkedIn has always maintained that you must know the person you want to connect with on their platform. They've lightened up on this in recent years in my opinion and lately I've been getting connection requests like followers on Twitter.

 So that's it. For me, by using Twitter and LinkedIn in this way it helps me to filter legitimate business contacts from business contacts I'd like to get to know better. How do you use social media to develop business leads? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Or do you have questions? Connect with me through my website and let's chat!

D

B2B Sales for Creative Professionals

So a couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of sharing my 20 years of sales experience in the technology, marketing and media production at a presentation to some creative and technology peers.

If you are a writer, a photographer, a videographer, a filmmaker, a video producer, a website designer, website developer, or in marketing coordinating all of the above in the best interest of the brand for your clients, I hope this information helps your business.

My PowerPoint slides are up on Slideshare. You can view them here - http://www.slideshare.net/dennispowers/b2b-sales - while reading the information that went into each slide below.

Frame 1:

B2B Sales for Designers & Developers

• Why am I here? – I want to provide you - a creative professionals (people who create - entrepreneurs, marketers, technologists, designers, developers/programmers, writers, videographers, photographers) with tips and tools to make your career of choice a little more sustainable. If any of us get out of this business and drives a bus for a living (be honest - you’ve thought of it), it’s because we couldn’t make a decent living at it.
• Why do I want to help? - because you need to know that each of you are amazing. You do what I wish I could do. I wish I had the talent to design or develop a website, produce an amazing video, write an amazing story. And those that can’t do -?- sell for those that can.

Frame 2:

Who Am I

• 20 years in technology, marketing and media production
• My roles have generally included new business development, account management and project management.
• I’ve worked music production, video and television production and post production, interactive CD/DVD authoring, media transfer/duplication/replication, print production, website and software design/development, online marketing
• So – going full circle, I now sell everything including graphic design and website design and development projects as well as integrated marketing and advertising campaigns that potentially require all of my media production experience.

Frame 3:

Why are sales important?

• Selling is not easy. It’s a numbers game, even for those that are good at it. The harder you work at it, the more opportunities you’ll find and the greater the rewards.
• For those of us that work at it regularly it’s like an abusive relationship. When it’s bad it’s really bad and you get rejected time after time. But when it’s good and you find and win those projects you want – Each close is an amazing rush!
• There’s any number of reasons why sales are important to your business.
• If these reasons aren’t inspiration enough and if selling is uncomfortable for you, then make your reason personal - you need a why.
• If your why is strong enough, it will give you the leverage you need to overcome the fear of rejection and get on with selling.
• You’re why could be = wanting to send the kids to university, wanting to afford that big vacation, paying the mortgage, buying that new car… Powerful why’s can provide good incentive to do the things we have to do in our businesses that maybe aren’t as fun as others.

Frame 4:

What a consistent sales strategy solves

• This is what feast and famine looks like.
• Feast and famine lead generation/sales leads to feast and famine revenue generation for your business
• Most of the businesses we’re trying to attract won’t live and die by the services and solutions we provide. 
• Marketing materials, Internet solutions and applications, despite what we believe, may not be perceived as necessities for the business we are trying to attract.
• The sales cycle can take up to 2 years from lead to client.
• How do we feed ourselves and bring in projects consistently?
• You need to come up with a strategy and process that allows you to consistently develop leads, opportunities and closes and turns this roller coaster into a nice solid sustainable line.
• Have enough balls in the air (juggling) to know that one could drop at anytime.
• And if a bunch drop? Well what a great problem that would be!
• Bottom line? You’ve solved the feast and famine problem for your business.

Frame 5:

What’s my sales process?

• That’s pretty much it, in a nutshell.

Frame 6:

Leads research

• Through these channels I look for news that companies are expanding, winning awards. 
• I look at companies that are actively advertising or marketing their businesses.
• I assess their marketing efforts, their advertising, their websites, their social media and I look for weaknesses in their strategies or solutions. Regarding development/programming, I’m looking for ways where a solution or an enhanced solution can lower costs or increase revenue long-term.
• I’m always looking for ways I can help.
• From there, I’m trying to find who I need to contact.

Frame 7:

Making contact

• I use these tools for making initial contact.
• And yes. You do have to make the occasional cold-call.
• When you make that initial contact, there may be a tendency to tell your whole story and value statement as quickly as you can before you’re rejected. This is a mistake.
• People are busy. There’s no time to read a long email, listen to a long scripted speech on a phone call or at a networking event.
• Keep it short and sweet.
• You’re initial goal is to find out if they’re a decision maker, if they need your help and what that need might be.
• Give them a quick pitch about you and wait for buy-in. Wait for your sales lead to invest or engage into your sales process with you.
• If they buy-in – ASK QUESTIONS AND LISTEN
• Ask questions that provide the answers you need to accurately identify the opportunity.
• This is your dance and you need to gently lead the dance to its destined conclusion.
• I don’t do hard sales, soft sell only.
• The turtle wins this race.
•  Remember - No doesn’t mean no, in sales. It may mean “not right now”

Frame 8:

Follow-up

• These are the tools I typically use for follow-up.
• I usually place a follow-up sales call 2 days after every email if I don’t get a response. I don’t trust email.
• I try to find reasons to stay in touch with potential customers.
• I send emails to potential clients when we’ve worked on a project or campaign that is relevant to them or their needs.
• I stay in touch through social media.
• I stay front-of-mind through enewsletters.
• I watch my cost of sales. Sometimes an opportunity doesn’t develop and at some point your investment in developing an opportunity outweighs the revenue that opportunity will bring to your business – cut it loose or cutback your follow-up. Lots of times an opportunity can simply be given the time to develop on it’s own.

Frame 9:

The opportunity

• Doing this right is key to developing a successful proposal and ultimately delivering what the client needs.
• This is a 2-way conversation with both sides listening.
• You want them to provide you with the onformation you need to accurately understand the goals and requirements of the project, especially budget (if you can).
• And you need to explain your approach and make the client understand what they’re going to get at roughly what price.
• From the back and forth of this discussion you should have the information you need to put a proposal together that will help you win the project.

Frame 10

Quotes & proposals

• My proposals have these elements and more. My proposals are roadmaps for the production or the campaign. If I fall off the face of the planet tomorrow, I want the team I work with to be able to read the proposal and have all the information they need to move on with production.
• Writing proposals, in my opinion can really hurt your cost of sales. So try to do what you can to understand the budget of the project or campaign and approach the proposal appropriately. 
• Small budget = smaller, more templated proposal.
• Big budget = more custom proposal.

Frame 11

Follow-up & close

• The goal here is to get feedback and respond to objections.
• As part of my dance and setting expectations for the quoting process and production process, the client will expect my follow-up as part of the process and that I expect some back and forth and may even present a revised proposal until we come to an agreement – a win-win.
• I also expect that the client can say no, or not-now at any point through this process, but it’s ok because - No doesn’t mean no, it means “not right now”. It may even mean not this project, but it’s never - never. 
• There are 3 possible outcomes from this point: yes, no, or not now.
• Not now? Follow-up again, watch cost of sales.
• Sometimes opportunities close on their own as well.

Frame 12

The sales job is never over

• Never take that sales cap off. I know a lot of us wear many different hats in our businesses, but never take the sales cap off. It’s more like a toque you wear under all of your other hats.
• I take a holistic view regarding a company or a brand in our industry. Every touchpoint you and your company have with a client before, during and after a project or campaign is an opportunity to sell your company and outshine your competitors.
• Current clients are just as important as new clients.
• Stay in touch with customers, continue to provide value.
• My personal opinion, based on personal experience. This is in regards to website design and development especially. I still talk to new leads that have NEVER heard from their website designer after the launch of their website. I think this hurts us all. We have to do better.
• Find ways to stay in touch and support your customers. I review results of the last project with them, if it was a website project we did together I review Google Analytics results with them, I pitch ideas about new campaigns they can consider. Always asking how I can continually add value to my customer’s business?
• If you are not caring for your clients, your customers will eventually become someone else’s customers.
• It isn’t personal, it’s just business, and there’s a lot of competition out there.
• I’ve built successful businesses around simply building trust, providing value, and developing strong long-term relationships with my customers.

Frame 13

Final thoughts and tips

• CRM’s are a must for me. They keep me on track, especially with follow-ups. I’ve used Salesforce, Sugar and Highrise.
• Work at leads research, making contact and follow-ups every week. 
• How much sales work should you do each week?
• Find out what your opportunities to close ratio is and work back from there using your revenues projections to determine how many proposals you need to do to meet those targets. From there you should be able to break down how many sales calls you need to make a month, a week. 

Thank you for the opportunity to share this information with you. I hope it helps.

I try to put resources on my website dennispowers.ca. I’ve got an article about Twitter for sales up there now, and I’m developing an article about using social media as a CRM… It should be up shortly.

 - D