Category Archives: Just in case

60 Seconds to Sell Yourself

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Sign on the door of a unisex washroom

Sign on the door of a unisex washroom (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I don’t call them elevator pitches, I call mine bathroom lineup chat (I’m a woman). As was brought home to me at the sold out Oprah live event in Toronto where I waited with 6500 women to pee, it’s really important to have a swift way to keep people interested and engaged. Even if they’re a captive audience.

Keep it simple but don’t be general:

Focus on the problem that you solve

Take 10 – 20 seconds to state what you do. No need to state your name that’s boring, it will probably be forgotten, it wastes time, and more importantly it is on your business card. When stating what you do, be sure to be interesting so that you will stand out (remember you only have 60 seconds to make an impression on someone and be memorable). Get right to the point and explain what problem or problems that you solve for your customers.

via 60 Seconds to Sell Yourself.

Remember these tips, the next time that you need the loo!

With kindness as always,

Chala

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How to have the “ugly” performance conversation

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Do you remember something called the ‘Bell Curve’ from your school days? When applied to work performance, it basically means that most people (68%) are in the middle and have average quality of work while 16% are high performers and naturally the other 16% are low performers.

“We fire all our low 16%” laughingly said a friend who owns a successful mid sized company. I knew what he meant because some work cultures have little resources to waste on investing in low performers to get them to become average. Don’t you wish you worked for him?

I’ve long been singing the praises of the use of coaching skills to develop leaders such as intentional listening, questioning and acknowledging skills but what do we use for those average and low performers?

In my workshops, I teach managers about a tool called DIRECT (a pretty acronym for an ugly conversation). DIRECT is used in performance management conversations where an expectation is not being met and needs to change. Continue reading →

“The Terrified Networker”

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I used to be a terrified networker–afraid of those milling crowds and round
table breakfasts.  How could a self confident professional speaker extravert
like me be afraid? Here’s my story…

My first networking experience scarred me for years. As a brand new coach, a
networking seminar I attended taught me how to use a 30 second elevator speech
to introduce myself to individuals in a crowd and to allow (force) them to
experience what it is that I do (coach) on the spot through a series of
questions directed at the victim in front of me.

Let me tell you how fast most people I encountered at that cocktail ran away
from me. The most memorable, however was the woman who flat out declared with
wide eyed fear (while physically backing away from me) that she felt that I was
trying to sell something to her and after delivering that blow, fled out of the
building.  I followed her not long after and vowed never to return to the foray
of networking for as long as I lived.

Now, years later, I can recognize that there were more than a few issues with
my approach on that fateful day.  I had honestly decided to take this key
marketing tool out of my personal toolkit to gain new clients.

I then discussed this terror around networking with my own coach and she
referred me to Coach U founder Sandy Villa’s book titled Power Networking (Bard
Press, 2000).   I started experiencing a whole shift in not just the way I
viewed networking but in the whole way I approached marketing my business. Continue reading →