Summer Slowdown: 12 Ways to Pay Attention this Season

Why is it every year many of us experience a summer slowdown? Business slows down, networks stop meeting, work attendance decreases, business development activities grind to a halt and yet… we still have budgets, goals and targets to achieve?  How do you handle the ‘unproductive’ attitude summer brings for you and your team?

How can you juggle vacation schedules, kids home from school, warm weather and the overwhelming desire to go on cruise control? Historically summer may have been a time for you where you took it easy did minimum activity and were more focussed on what you could achieve when fall comes around… not this year.

Decide to make this your most productive summer ever with 12 strategies that set the roadwork for continual business growth… all year round.

 

Take advantage of the weather. Use the longer hours of daylight to conduct meetings later in the day, take advantage of warmer conditions and meet people at outdoor venues, and meet clients for lunch to enjoy lighter food and warm sunshine.

Review your business plan. Make a 2 hour appointment with yourself to review all the actions in your business plan, cash flows, targets and spend time determining what you need to achieve your goals for this financial year. Your business plan should not be hiding in your bottom draw or collecting dust on a shelf, it is a living document that can be reviewed regularly – make summer your time to help you determine your next steps.

Revisit your marketing plan. What plan you ask? If you don’t have one, now is the time to sit and write one. If you need help there are an abundance of talented consultants who will assist you build a customised plan for your business that will incorporate your business plan. If you already have one, review your progress, determine what actions need to be taken and schedule time during the summer to complete those tasks.

Conduct a 6-month business review. Spend 2 hours reviewing your business achievements for the past 6 months. Ask yourself a series of 11 questions:

• How would I rate my previous 6 months business performance (1-10 with 10 being the highest)?
• Did I achieve my financial goals each month?
• If not, why not?
• If not, what do I need to do differently in the next 6 months to meet my annual budget or plan?
• If I did meet these targets (congratulations to you), were they big enough?
• Have I conducted staff reviews with my team? If not, why not? And when?
• If so, have I rewarded my team adequately?
• Do I need to invest more in my team or personal development?
• Is my marketing plan on track? If not, why not?
• If not, what activities do I need to conduct to implement more marketing strategies?
• Have I done sufficient networking to grow my business or my connections? If not, why not?

When you have completed these questions, create a series of tasks, actions or projects to implement some of your strategies to help you really achieve all your targets for the next 6 months.

Invest in your personal development. Have you been meaning to read the latest business book? Is there a summit you could attend? Is there an online program you have wanted to complete? Is there a web seminar you wanted to register for? This is a great time of year to invest in yourself, refresh your memory and learn a new skill. Summer is conducive to learning.

Conduct a summer clean. Just like a spring clean, but during the summer months. A newly organized space that is clean and tidy can help bring focus and pull you from your summer slowdown. This summer clean could include:

• Clear, delete or file those read emails in your inbox
• Unsubscribe from all those newsletters that you don’t read
• Allocate 1 hour to get your paper filing up to date (if you have more than 1 hour’s worth, do 1 hour per week until it is all complete)
• Throw unwanted, unread journals that you have been ‘meaning’ to read, but haven’t and won’t
• Review your ‘tasks’ on your to-do list or in your Outlook file and remove those tasks that simply won’t be completed
• Spend 15 minutes cleaning the top of your desk, remove unnecessary stationery, put away files, clean the dust of your family photo, throw away empty water bottles and wipe down your computer keyboard and screen. A clean and clear desk will help you be more productive any time of year!
• Enter the details into your contact management system of the business card pile that is gathering dust on your desk.

Hold a team development activity.

If you manage a team of people, you can bet they are feeling a summer slowdown as well. Allocate some time to meet for lunch at an outdoor café, take 3 hours and visit the local zoo as a team (work out which animal best represents each member of your team… only joking), meet early for a game of golf or tennis after work, bring food to share for lunch and conduct a meeting in your local park. Spend time listening to your team, their challenges, their achievements and plan your next 6 months and how you will achieve the targets for the whole team. Use the warmer weather to conduct outdoor versions of activities you normally conduct indoors.

Volunteer. Allow each of your team members to choose a local organization or charity they want to support and give them a day of service. Share the results with your clients and the local media of the great work you are doing. Share with board members information about you and your company.

Call 15 existing clients every week. Set yourself a target of reaching out to 3 existing clients every day and thank them for their business. Don’t leave the office until you have completed your calls.

Book a ‘tele-coffee’ with your clients. What is a ‘tele-coffee’? It is where you make a coffee and they make a coffee and the two of you meet by teleconference. It is a more productive way of meeting (and avoids wasted time in travel). 

Visit a new networking group. Many networking groups don’t meet in the summer, but those serious about building their business are still networking, still growing their business and still making valuable connections. Find out which groups are meeting and plan to attend at least 2 new groups in the summer. This is the perfect time to develop new relationships and valuable connections. 

Create a list of new business development targets.

Once you have made your list book appointments to include lunch, breakfast or even a tele-coffee. Create a plan within your schedule to contact them regularly. Contact could include a phone call, email, sending them an interesting article, inviting them to a networking event with you, sending a parcel of products or a face to face meeting.

To continually grow your business and avoid the summer slowdown, you need to pay attention to the seasons and take advantage of their timing without suffering a summer slowdown. Instead, get more productive. Use this time to get a head start on all those fall meetings you can conduct when people return from vacation, ensure all plans are in place to achieve your annual results, tidy your work environment so you are not distracted by clutter and experiment with new products, and new networking opportunities. Embrace the warmer weather for outdoor meetings and events and enjoy all that summer brings for your business growth.

Feel like your team is suffering a summer slowdown, putting off today what could be done tomorrow? Watch this short video for tips – from me to you – on how to beat summer procrastination. Enjoy!

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3 Ways to Get Attention by Giving Attention First

Learning to get attention or increasing your level of success is a focus for a lot of people. I believe, however, that to get attention, it’s really important to first GIVE attention. When you do, your results can be so much more amazing.

So, let’s look at a couple of strategies that work well for both giving and getting attention:

 

 

See and hear others. One basic human need is to be seen and heard. When we provide that for others, it strengthens our relationships. Are you truly stopping to listen more and talk less when you’re in presence of others? Are you really seeing them for who and what they are? Are you paying attention to the things that are important to them? Practice really being in the present when having conversations with those around you.

Leverage social media. Liking, commenting and sharing the social media posts of the people in your circle is a simple and quick way of letting people know that you see and hear them. A minute of your time could mean a lot to someone!

Notice EVERYTHING. I love to pay attention to what people’ favorite meals are, favorite flowers, special occasions or an accomplishment. And because I know I won’t remember everything, I like to write those things down and keep reminders. It’s those little things that are big in terms of showing others how much they mean and that they are seen.

If you want to get attention for you, your project, your team or the products and services you offer, the first thing to do is to proactively communicate.  For example, if you wanted to share what your team has accomplished this week — can you be your own publicist?  Can you proactively share with your boss five great things your team has done?

The other thing you can do to get attention in a positive way is to promote others. I love promoting my speaker friends to my clients. I love to promote the good work that people do, whether that’s books or blogs or videos that they’ve created.

Can you promote others as well and get attention for their message or good work? If you really want to get attention, give first.

Stand in service of others and be sure that the important people in your life know that you see and hear them. When you do, ah-mazing things happen!

Need more ideas and inspiration for how you can give the right attention to earn the best attention for yourself?

In this video, you’ll learn:

• How to give others the attention necessary to make them feel heard
• How to position yourself in a positive manner that allows you to maximize the attention for you and your brand
• Provide others with positive attention that is reciprocal and awards you in return.

 

What would you add? I’d love to hear your thoughts.  If you’d like to teach your team the skills and tools to both get and give the kind of attention that can propel production, increase positive team dynamics and grow your business? Give me a call today to learn how I can help.

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Presenters Learn from Peloton Instructors: Pay Attention

It’s no secret I am obsessed with my Peloton. If you don’t believe me, read this blog I wrote a little while ago.

 

This workout is beyond the stationary bike. It’s a community of people with 26K+ people in the Facebook group, and loyal fans that trek across the country to ride live with their fave Peloton instructors at the NY studio (affectionately called the mother ship) and people drive hours to meet their fave  instructors at Peloton stores in malls around the USA.

 

As a keynote speaker, focused on the topic of attention, I am constantly looking for examples of how people bring their messages to life. It might be watching a comedian on Netflix, attending a show on Broadway or watching a musician perform their latest hits. We can learn so much about the art of presenting from people around us.

 

A brilliant example of presentation skills comes from the variety of personalities and Peloton instructors . John Foley, the CEO has clearly hand picked his crew and created celebrity profiles for each of them. Some have cult-like followings and I admit to being part of those tribes.

 

Each Peloton instructor has their unique approach to their classes and listed below are some of my major learnings we can all apply to our presentations at work, at home and in our community.

 

Be real – all instructors are authentic. Not all instructors will appeal to all audiences. They don’t apologize for how they show up. They are authentically themselves. Some swear. Others don’t. Some focus on heart rate, others on fun. Some sing out loud on their bike, and others share mantras. I love how they show up confidently as themselves.

 

How can you show the audience more of who you are so they instantly want to listen to you?

 

Create memorable phrases – as a keynote speaker one of our secret weapons are memorable phrases we create that are memorable, repeatable and re-tweetable. We craft words our audience can share with others to help land key messages.

The instructors do the same:

• Jennifer Jacobs (or JJ) says ‘it’s you against you’ and ‘let’s fly’
• Cody Rigsby says ‘one two’ and calls everyone ‘boo’
• Jennifer Sherman says ‘JFDI’ which is an acronym for ‘just f**king do it’
• Alex Toussaint says ‘Feel good, look good, do better

Christine D’Ercole says ‘I am. I can. I will. I do’

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Delete Email for Productive Communication – Use Brilliant Tech Tools Instead

Did you know U.S. companies lose $588 billion each year due to distracted multitasking? What if your company could delete email and other archaic applications? Imagine the time you could save in productive work hours.

Companies struggle to maximize productivity while meeting the demands of the workforce. They want to utilize talented employees across the globe and provide flexible work environments, yet fear the impact of time wasted in daily communication. Since the success of organizations require us to do more with less while maximizing the use of time, it’s essential to look at the way in which business is conducted daily.

Technology has provided companies with huge advantages, changing the pace at which we work. It allows us to accomplish tasks more quickly, more easily and quite often with less expense. Email has turned into a thing of the past, an archaic tool that demands too much of our time and attention.

New technological advances, such as RingCentral Glip, lump our multiple outdated 90’s era tools into one ultra-slick, super productivity tool. No more do we have to utilize spreadsheets for task tracking, notes to capture conversations, intranet databases for file sharing and endless numbers of emails requiring our time and attention.

Here are some ways your organization can benefit from using Glip:

No More Email – Tools like Glip create huge advantages for companies. This real-time platform allows employees to quickly chat, discuss ideas and maintain records of conversations without dozens of emails to peruse. Employees aren’t forced to draft a message with subject, header and signature. Readers aren’t required to open emails, respond, determine who needs to be copied and wait indefinitely before receiving a response. When you use Glip, the chat is real time and can be text or video. Video calling is a paid feature within the Glip platform that’s available now that Glip is part of RingCentral. So delete email, and get with the modern program of real-time messaging.

Outdated Third Party Video Conferencing Platforms – We’ve all become accustomed to setting up meetings and utilizing third party platforms to enable video conferencing. With the new RingCentral Glip UI, users can quickly access each other in face-to-face conversations, allowing them to see facial expressions and body language. Users do not have to download and execute separate files and extensions to conduct a video conference.

Spreadsheet Project Tracking Pain – Remember the days when companies ran on Microsoft Excel? Now with tools like Glip, employees can share documents, assign tasks, project manage work with deadlines and timeframes. We don’t have to email spreadsheets back and forth or fear multiple versions are being used. The work and tasks are visual and available for everyone to see any time.

Endless Shared Databases – Now where was that file again? Imagine the number of hours wasted by employees searching through shared databases trying to find a file someone uploaded and saved for them to view. With Glip, files are easily accessible in the shelf feature that keeps relevant documents handy. It even allows the ability to prioritize frequently used documents and those of most importance.

Imagine the amount of time your company could save in productive work hours by ridding yourself of email, spreadsheets, third party video conferencing, and shared databases. Imagine if your employees were able to use one tool that did it all. Imagine the ability for employees to be available, no matter where they resided. Just consider the possibilities you’d have to make your workforce more flexible.

Advances in technology have ushered in this new era of business. So what are you waiting for?

To discover more ways your business can save time, create flexibility and maximize productivity, visit www.neenjames.com and learn how to profit by paying attention to what matters most.

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Close the Deal with Same Side Selling Strategies by Ian Altman

Are you tired of playing games with your customers?

Does it sometimes seem like you and your client are working against each other?

Is it time to develop selling strategies that break through sales barriers?

As a coach and keynote speaker, I’m always on the lookout for ways my clients can save time, improve productivity and find efficiencies by paying attention to what matters most. If you’re in a position of sales leadership managing a team or an individual sales professional challenged with how to close the deal, you’ll find Same Side Selling strategies to be direct and time saving!

Same Side Selling, by author, speaker and coach Ian Altman, gives practical steps to break through sales barriers and turn confrontation into cooperation. Sellers that implement the Same Side Selling approach will be seen as a valuable resource, not a predatory peddler.

A Different Type of Book on Selling

What makes Same Side Selling strategies different from any other book on this topic is that it is co-authored by people on both “sides”: a salesman (Ian) and a procurement veteran who understands how companies buy (Jack). The buyer’s perspective is baked into every sentence of the book, along with the seller’s point of view. Our aim is to replace the adversarial trap with a cooperative, collaborative mindset. We also want to replace the old metaphor of selling as a game.

 

Want to know more about how Same Side Selling strategies can help you and your team close the deal? Watch here and learn:

• How to work with your customer to achieve a win-win that benefits the success of you both;
• Create a relationship with customers that ensures efficient decision making and discussions;
• Radical approach to breaking through traditional sales barriers and cycles.

 

Want to learn more about Ian Altman and his incredibly effective selling strategies? Visit his website to check out his other books.

 

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