Welcome!

Below you’ll find our recently recorded teleseminar. If you have any questions or suggestions, or would like information about bringing our guest to your organization, please contact me using my contact information on the bottom of this page.

Turn up the volume on your computer and click the play button to listen to the teleseminar.

This one is from my friend and client, Kevin Johnston, CMP, CEO of Advantage Event Group.

In difficult times, how we view the present and the future often dictates our actions and reactions. Accident prone people often draw attention due to their “bad luck.” When we wake up on the “wrong side of the bed” do we not view things negatively throughout the day? Rhetorical questions, I know, but are we not what we think we are?

Current industry conditions: Good or Bad? Research shows that our industry is cyclical. The pendulum swings from buyers market to sellers every seven or eight years or so. PricewaterhouseCoopers details this “cycle” in a very concise Hospitality report that is used by hoteliers and hotel owners to assist them in purchasing and forecasting. They, fairly accurately, predict trends and forecast when there will be ups and downs. So what? How prepared are you (were you) for any downturn?

Reinventing ourselves is an often touted solution. Thinking “outside the box” is easy…if you are an outside the box type of person. That process does not come naturally to some, especially in this industry. Good planners are paid to fit details tightly inside a box. A specific box, with a specific dimension, at a specific cost. Sales and marketing types are taught to sell the box, but not to dwell on what is going in it, what color it is, or even who will pay for it or when it will arrive.  There is a real similarity between these two types of people…they are only successful when they work together. Independent planners suffer most in an economic downturn. They are often so good at the detail that they can’t get comfortable in an “outside the box” sales or promotion arena that draws business to them or their company. Networking at cocktail events doesn’t count.

We are creatures of habit. We do what is comfortable and don’t do what makes us feel uneasy. And we are taught what we know from childbirth. Henceforth the reference to Mother Goose. We all recall Old Mother Hubbard, who went to the cupboard to get her poor dog a bone.  Every time I hear that rhyme I think, someone should have told her to look somewhere else! You might say she needed to think “outside the box” or cupboard.

Looking for business or opportunities in the same places, with the same people may be rewarding in an up economy. But with more entrepreneurs being force to start their own shops, forsaking old ways may be a key to financial survival. You may have to re-tool. Don’t focus on what you do, focus on what clients want and need.  Spend time to develop relationships with those that can be engaged in a partner type roll. You find that there are synergies with many different companies or people that can open doors and create new client relationships. Planners partnering with producers, registration and web/communication companies, and vice versa. Often planners can create business opportunities and create cost effective solutions for clients when aligning themselves with complimentary services. You have to be able to show clients how you can “find your fee” through savings that they otherwise not realize.

Take time to hone skills when business is slow. Learn how to better create budget templates by taking free Microsoft online training. Work on your presentation materials. Research competition web sites to learn how to better present yourself and your company.  Read a book on how to boost your confidence and sell yourself in adverse conditions.

Successful people form the habits that failures never do. It’s very simple, and it’s continually proven…”If you think you can or you can’t, you’re right!” Get up, quit looking in that empty cupboard, pick up the phone and partner up.

Kevin R. Johnston, CMP | CEO
kjohnston@advantageeventgroup.com

With over 30 million LinkedIn users, less than 10 percent actually know how to get the most from this platform. The goal of this article is to serve as a wake up call as much as a future foretold. I believe there are five fundamental reasons as to why the demise of LinkedIn is imminent if there are not critical improvements:

1. Equilibrium - In any social networking exchange there must be equilibrium between producers and consumers. Think of eBay, Amazon.com or any other site where there is a producer and a consumer. Imagine if on eBay or Amazon.com the only active users/visitors were sellers of products and no one bought anything, would those organizations actually be able to post annual revenues of $7.6B and $14.8B respectively?

Philosophically, we are all sellers; we sell ourselves, our expertise and our perceived value add. However, in the process there is typically a consumer, someone who needs or wants what we have to sell. Many executives have told me that most of the individuals they have found on LinkedIn are other service providers, not consumers, thus questioning the value-add of the site. This perceived inequality reduces the effective social networking investment rate of return and thus the consistent involvement of the current and future value producers.

2. Visual - We are very much a visual society, yet little to no information is represented graphically on LinkedIn. One school of thought is the time graphics take to download could bog down the system and make it less user friendly. However, with the increasing availability of wider bandwidth, and reduced graphic storage costs there should be no reason why LinkedIn could not integrate to a social networking map. If you look at SmartMoney.com’s “heat map” or the IntroNetworks “pin view” they are each very competent in visual representation of highly dispersed yet highly relevant data sets.  Users would be considerably more engaged if they could see their social network on LinkedIn in a much more visibly appealing manner.

3. Diversity & Quality - One misnomer about LinkedIn is that the sheer size of your network is what matters most, yet when it comes to effective social networking, the single biggest asset is the diversity of your relationships. The more diverse your social network, the broader and more expansive your social networking footprint and thus your sphere of influence.

Another issue is the quality of relationships, and the idea that all relationships are not created equal. The Relationship Value Pyramid™ as mentioned in Relationship Economics (Wiley Sept. 2008), demonstrates this idea in considerable detail.  Without a systematic approach to identify, categorize and invest in your most valuable relationships at different quality levels, how will a LinkedIn user ever improve their existing relationship bank? LinkedIn has yet to address this issue, there is no measurement tool or capabilities to track those investments in our most valuable relationships and as such realize a return on our relationship investment.

4. Mass collaboration - Social networking has the promise and potential to dramatically evolve business-to-business relationships. We have seen the evolution of many one-to-one relationship tools, and with advent of web 2.0 capabilities, I am mesmerized as to why LinkedIn is unable to provide an opportunity for real time many-to-many mass collaboration. Why can’t the answers section function more like a real time micro blog like Twitter? Why must we still type text versus use voice or video to interact or engage our social network?  LinkedIn must evolve to conversation with more than just connections and recommendations to create real time dialogue. It must evolve into a platform of collaboration.

5. Cross-platform functionality - One of the most frustrating aspects of the current tools like Twitter, Facebook, Naymz, ZoomInfo, Spoke, and XING, is that none of these “communicate” with the other – it has become the social networking equivalent of the tower of babble. Why can’t I invite a list of contacts from Jigsaw to a LinkedIn group? Why can’t I embed my tweets into a user mash-up in LinkedIn? Until social networking sites realize co-opetition (competitors who can cooperate toward a greater cause or to fight a common enemy) their ability to create greater opportunities and expand visibility and revenue will be limited. Neither, LinkedIn or any other networking tool will truly evolve into a true social networking platform without cross-platform functionality.

Here is a bonus one for you - Mission Critical: The 1-9-90 phenomenon, states that in any social network, only one percent will be the high-value hubs. They are proactively engaged and influential and they bring high-value content. Nine percent will be moderately engaged and not only appreciate but interact in dialogue with the one percent, leaving the other 90 percent to the casual observers. Unless LinkedIn identifies and nurtures strategic relationships with the one percent high-value hubs and realizes the critical nature of the interaction between the one and the nine, it will struggle to sustain the perceived value-add beyond the initial intrigue.

What do you think?

1. Givers - those who give openly;
2. Takers - those who you only hear from when they want / need something;
3. Investors - those who understand that relationships are an investment of time, effort & resources!

My company has been laying off due to the economic downturn in the industry and I was a part of this third round of lay-offs. I am open to any new opportunities that will allow me to grow and expand and would love to hear from you if you know of anything that may be sales related and a great opportunity. Please visit my Linked In profile and references are available upon request.  Thank you in advance for your consideration.

In a turbulent economy or otherwise, those who invest in the favor economy are the ones who will always get a head!  Which one are you?  If I asked three people who know you, which one would they say you are? 

Webinar host, Ed Poll, a nationally recognized management consultant who has helped transform many law practices into profitable and successful businesses, featured guest David Nour, who demonstrated to a sold out audience how to develop a meaningful online presence utilizing various social networking sites to enhance both an individual as well as the firm’s visibility.

Below are just some of the topics covered in this session:
Social Networking / Web 2.0 Overview
LinkedIn® Best Practices, including:

1. Creating a content-rich profile
2. How to connect with your most trusted relationships
3. Searching for people, companies, and opportunities to reach out to others
4. Turning everyday contacts into answers and revenue
5. Advanced search techniques to target your efforts
6. The real value of premium membership
7. Most compelling approaches to creating access
8. Highly decentralized knowledge management
9. Turning answers into alliance relationships
10. Due diligence best practices

Click the player below to hear the audio from this session.

“In today’s networked world, relationships are everything! David shows you how to make the most of them. Shows you how to build lasting, mutually-beneficial relationships! Read this book – build your network!” - Marshall Goldsmith, New York Times best-selling author of What Got You Here Won’t Get You There and Executive Coach to Fortune 100 CEOs

Topics such as tracking the quantifiable value of your most strategic – often your most valuable business relationships in a global economy increasingly more disconnected, were discussed.  Highly interactive dialogue with the sold out audience included questions regarding how to prioritizing one’s most critical relationships, key investment strategies in different types and business stature levels of relationships, and specific best practices to derive the highest return on one’s influence, involvement, and impact.

David Nour is a social networking strategist, a thought leader and sought after international speaker on the quantifiable value of business relationships and a senior management advisor to Fortune and Inc. 500 firms.

During their 60-minute conference call, three critical points were addressed:

1. The Quantifiable Value of Your Strategic Relationships
2. Leveraging Your Strategic Relationships to Combat Flight Risk
3. Social Networking Best Practices to Accelerate Adaptive Innovation

Click the Play button below to hear the audio from this session

800-CEO-READ, a leading direct supplier of book-based resources, compiles a monthly list of best-selling business books based on purchases by its corporate customers nationwide. Here are the best sellers for October 2008:

23. “Relationship Economics: Transform Your Most Valuable Business Contacts Into Personal and Professional Success” by David Nour; Wiley.

You can read about the others here…

Many Fortune 500 companies can’t get this right, so I was amazed at some of our findings:

1. On the positive side, many of the 40,000+ recipients not only opened our newsletter, but read the content, found it of interest and value, and even forwarded a number of items to others – see article on the value of social networking at work
2. Why do I need to know you’re out of the office and won’t be back until next Tuesday at 12:28 AM?!?  We all get way too many emails, and I’m convinced this is one we can do without.
3. The referral to others while you’re out was interesting, if not amusing – “here are 28 different names and numbers for you to contact if you want any of these 117 items on the menu of what I do each day.  By the way, I’ve stepped away for a bio break for 00:02 minutes.”

Joking aside, the most disappointing aspect of our campaign was:

• Some really nasty responses!  When did we become this unprofessional over an unwanted email?  Simply hit the delete button or click the unsubscribe link – why the hostility?  And while we’re on this topic, what does my mother have anything to do with it?!?
• Corporate Relationship Deficit Disorder – confirmed!  People who specifically came up to me and have asked for copies of my presentation and have sent me emails, suddenly have no idea who I am?  I actually researched and found one person’s business card and emailed the back of the card (where they wrote a kind note) to them to remind them.  It reiterated that we have a very short attention span, and our interest, and what we perceive to be of value changes daily!

Bottom line – two lessons / reminders:

1. Stay in consistent contact with value-add; over several months, while we cleaned up and consolidated our list of contacts, we didn’t do a very good job in staying in touch and as such, people are not likely to remember you when you do re-engage them.
2. I’m reminded of advice from Bruce Kasanoff, a former CEO of mine: “Remember information FOR people and not ABOUT them; when it’s for them, it is for their benefit – when it’s about them, it’s for yours!”

At Relationship Economics, we’re trying to remember information for you and provide value-add with every interaction in the quantifiable and strategic value of business relationships.  I hope you’ll join us on what I can promise will be an interesting journey in 2009 and beyond… 

Click HERE to subscribe to the Relationship Economics Newsletter, our Social Networking Best Practices, the Relationship Economics Bookmark, and / or Upcoming Events and get the 1st chapter of my book as a free download…

The article highlighted several points for introspection that I believe are important to all of us:

1. Are you making a living or living a life? We become complacent particularly in the fields where we are confident and we only take notice when we’ve been in the same job for 20 years. A lot of people are comfortably miserable but choose to stay due to golden parachutes and other perceived incentives.
2. Are you just going through the motions? Although Hourihan-Bailin had interviewed for a job with a boutique firm and the chemistry was great, the managing partner in a follow-up discussion told her what she already knew.  None of those she interviewed with felt like she wanted the job, so the entire interview process was more of a performance than her authentic self.
3. Are you beaming about your current position or have you lost touch with who you are and what you enjoy? You can clearly see in her face, her smile when she speaks of how great it was to lose her job, because it gave her the opportunity to rediscover herself and spend an unbelievable amount of quality time with her loved ones. “I no longer have the same grueling work hours and it was delicious to have time to myself.” She goes on to say, “I resolved to enjoy the summer with my husband and two girls: we went to the beach and studied Spanish in Guatemala. I took yoga and read War and Piece.”

Remember that in these turbulent economic times, your portfolio of relationships become your biggest asset.  They transcend across geography, any particular job, project or point in time in our lives.  Invest in one relationship a week and you’ll see an exponential return on your involvement and influence!

We are products of the advice we take. For your sake get some independent perspective, on not just where you are today and what you’re doing, but why? And more importantly find out where you are headed, at what cost and to what end? 

To read the article, Out of a job and realizing change is good, visit www.newyorktimes.com

Wonder,

At Relationship Economics®, we believe whether in a turbulent economy or otherwise, it’s our investments in the “favor economy” which will benefit all of us the most!  Check out Relationship Economics (Wiley, September 2008) for more actionable examples of quantifiable and strategic investment ideas in your most valuable business relationships.

what does your agenda says about your company meeting?