Ramp up your business etiquette

From my experience as a business owner of marketing, writing and design services, I believe that business professionals in southeastern Michigan need to ramp up their Northern charm and Midwestern good manners when it comes to returning phone calls and replying to e-mails.

Small business owners and entrepreneurs are heralded as the job creators and courageous warriors of commerce, yet the treatment that we receive from many prospects is not conducive to business.

I implore those of you who ignore phone calls and delete e-mails that have a legitimate request behind them (aka: not spam) to ramp up your business etiquette. Practice common courtesy when it comes to replying to phone calls and e-mails from those who don’t work in your company and are asking for your business, a referral or a favor.

Too many professionals leave callers and e-mail inquiries hanging. If it’s a legitimate call – even if it’s a cold call for business – please have the courtesy of at least sending an e-mail saying: 1.) I’m interested, please call; 2.) I might be interested, check back (state a day/time) or 3.) I’m not interested, but thanks for asking.

Most astute cold callers for professional services will include an e-mail and website so you can check out the company before responding.

My clients, trusted associates and best prospects are not included in this diatribe. I treasure them for their business, assistance and ongoing support and kindness.

Those with high-powered jobs think they are in the driver’s seat. Yet, it often takes just one business cycle downturn, incompatible boss or market shake-up to be out of a job. The tables could be turned. What if you were looking for a job or business leads and no one took your call or responded to your e-mail?

I’ve already preached the Golden Rule to my kids – Treat others the way you want to be treated.  Now I have to remind the business community that it applies to their human interactions as well.

Rules of thumb for response time:

Primarily for VPs, directors, managers and those who need a refresher.

• E-mail pitch for your business: If you have the time and interest, set up a phone call to learn more about the service. Based on those results, if you have an immediate or pending need for the service, set up a personal interview. If the caller (perhaps a business owner or associate) is convincing and the online presence is solid, hire the company to take on a smaller job to gauge the working relationship and results.

• After a job interview: Respond to the interviewee’s personal thank-you note within one week (e-mail acknowledgement is fine). Respond to phone calls within three to five days, even if you don’t know whether the interviewee has made it to the second round. If in doubt, have your HR department call or e-mail the interviewee.

• Request for an interview for a publication: Respond within three to five business days, and set up the interview as soon as possible, keeping in mind that you may receive copy to review before publication (for non-commercial media).

• Job in progress with business owner or associate: Don’t let two to three days go by without responding to a job in progress. If you are dealing with a major personal or work crisis, or are out of the country, try to send a short e-mail or text noting that fact.

• Proposal in the works: It takes time to listen to the prospects’ concerns and write up a proposal for consideration. The courtesy of a response (“yes,” “no” or even “maybe”) is necessary to move ahead with the project, amend it or table it. Being decisive is an admirable business trait.

If you have pet peeves about business etiquette, please share them so we can all improve our game.

Can your internal team handle the project?

In the professional services arena, there are times when a major project you are asked to handle begins with the attitude, “I can do that – no problem.” But, over time the project morphs into a huge gorilla that dominates your thoughts. As a result, you can’t eat, you can’t sleep, you spend too many hours worrying about the project. It’s almost as if that big project is stalking you. Maybe it’s a website. It could be a major report designed to bring in new business or obtain additional funding. Perhaps it’s a marketing event or seminar – where content and branding must align. Maybe your staff needs to be trained in using social media to reflect well on your business or organization. 

Consider your team when starting a project.
Photo by Liz Cezat. Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ

There could be several reasons for fear (or inaction) related to the project:

1.     It’s beyond your scope of expertise.

2.     You have the skills to do it, but don’t have time to complete it.

3.     You are a team of one, and you need the right people on board to make it happen.

4.     You have no interest in doing it. It’s outside your comfort zone of capability and you don’t have the time or patience for the learning curve.

5.     You’ve done it so many times, you want “fresh eyes” on the project. That way, you can take on new projects that do excite you.

To determine how you should approach this project, ask yourself these questions:

1. Do I have the right tools?
       2. Do I have people with the right skills to successfully complete the project?
       3. Have I set a realistic timeline for completion?
       4. Have I outlined the essential action steps from beginning to end?
       5. Do I have a realistic budget for this project?
       6. Once I complete the project, what benefits will my business or organization gain
           from it?

These are the essential questions that can put you in control when assessing whether to take on the project in-house or outsource it.

Above all, be realistic in what you can achieve. The right approach along with the right attitude can put you miles ahead in getting the project accomplished.

You can rely on the services of Cezat Creative Resources, Inc. to handle projects without the need for a retainer. We don’t rest on our laurels. Each project brings out our creative genius. We typically bill by the project, and welcome projects that are used for marketing, sales, training, fund-raising and overall communication. Our professional team handles writing and editing, graphic design, photography, website development and presentations. Take the first step: www.cezatcreative.com

Do what you are “best at” for happiness and fulfillment

Photo by Liz Cezat.

The end of a year and beginning of a New Year is often a time of reflection and resolutions. When thinking about what to write for this special blog post, I had no inspirational magic bullet. Yet, lately I’ve been thinking about Ed King and his practical yet profound advice to small business owners such as myself.

King is a retired Wayne State University Small Business adviser who remains a mentor and champion for multitudes of small business owners. I took an evening course of his and it has guided me for years. During the course, he insisted that we, as entrepreneurs, spend the majority of our time at work doing what we are best at. He used an example: Dr. Michael DeBakey, the famed heart surgeon who invented a device that led to the heart-lung machine, which paved the way for open-heart surgery, and who was a pioneer in heart transplantation – to name a few of his Texas-sized accomplishments.

What King found most impressive about the late Dr. DeBakey was that he went into surgery and only performed the portion of the surgery that he did best. He had directed other surgeons – associates or residents - to do other parts of the surgery, such as opening and closing the surgical site. This permitted Dr. DeBakey to perform thousands more surgeries. In the process, he saved many lives.

In the business world, King related this example to that of a coffee shop owner who worked best in her coffee shop interacting with customers and creating new coffee blends. Over time, she became immersed in the ancillary tasks, such as running errands and schlepping big bags of coffee beans. As a result, the business suffered and she wasn’t finding personal fulfillment either. The reason: she wasn’t doing what she was best at. She needed to direct her employees to do the heavy lifting so she could spend the bulk of her time interacting with customers and making great coffee.

Think about how this relates to you and your life. Are you doing the things that you are "best at" in your work world – whether you own a business or work as a director, manager or employee? If you’re not doing what you love to do and do well, think about transitioning in the next year to work that you love. It might even mean reorganizing your work to spend more time doing what you like and delegating what you aren’t so good at – preferably to someone who is good at the task and enjoys doing it. See the win-win here?

What I love to do and do best is to write, conduct interviews and do the project management – whether it’s for print, the web or presentations. This versatile skill set is well suited to marketing, public relations, fund raising and sales. This year, I’ve discovered it’s also good for sharing knowledge with others by being a trainer. I plan to do more training in the New Year.

In recent months, I’ve been working with a collaborative team on an Internet project. There’s a real need for a good writer who can organize a website, write snappy headlines and succinct copy, and keep tabs on all the moving parts and the people – working together to create new programs. The driving force for me is not only to work with creative professionals who are doing what they are “best at,” it’s also knowing how the end product will be used.

What I’m discovering is that maybe it’s not enough to do what you are “best at” but also to find the reason behind your desire for using that skill. You might find that there is a person or people behind your drive - because that’s often the true motivator for wanting to use one’s best talents to bring new things to light.

For Dr. DeBakey, it was saving patients' lives. For the coffee shop owner, it was sharing her knowledge and love of coffee with customers. For Ed King, it was helping business owners become successful. For me, it’s about communicating effectively to inspire, teach, influence and motivate people to take actions that will either improve their lives or the lives of others.

As we roll into a New Year, I have a sense of pride about my professional skills and my ability to deploy these skills to make a good living. Here’s something for you to think about: if you are doing work that you love, how can you make it even better? If you’re not doing what you love, isn’t it time to head in that direction?   

How to get new donors to support your major initiative

Bring your fundraising goals down to earth through
targeted communication. Photo by Liz Cezat.

Before you try to convince new donors to embrace and support a major initiative, you will need to find out something about their beliefs. If you are making a presentation, you may want to invite people from certain work places, clubs or neighborhoods, based on a scale of attributes that closely match your existing donors. Think of cloning the persona of your most avid donors. If you are planning a letter request,  target the message in a manner that explores the initiative fully and also points out how this initiative speaks to the new donors' interests.

Let’s say a fundraising professional needs to raise $5 million to name an endowed chair at the engineering school of a leading university. That professional knows to address the topic of a new endowed chair. Yet, he or she must adroitly weave in the core message, "What’s in it for the funder?" Because the funder or donor needs to be moved to make a generous donation for  this program.

You, as a fundraising professional, could proceed to talk about how the endowed chair will improve the faculty’s ability to teach because they will have new tools and technology to do research and be better equipped to teach their courses online or in the classroom. That same endowed chair will benefit students because it will provide funds for the university to upgrade their science laboratories. For donors, funding such a chair will enable them to feel empowered about advancing the level of education at the university, plus it will mean a more educated workforce for the businesses that these donors own or operate. The answer to the core message is: "Take ownership in this educational advancement."

As a fundraising professional, you need to provide descriptive details about how this new program will impact not only the university but also the larger community. Create a vision through your words and phrases to make it desirable to new donors. Illustrate through technological advances and personal touch-points how it will improve the standard of living in a community they care about. While the technological advances of the initiative provide a macro overview,  the personal touch points can make a connection with a micro view. 

The tone of your message - for print or in presentations - is vital to the success of your campaign. Striking the right balance between the appeal and making it appealing can elevate your website copy, newsletters, brochures and annual reports for a dynamic impact. The right approach can ensure the success of your fundraising goals for a university, health care system or a community-based nonprofit. 

I have expertise in crafting fundraising appeals for case statements, marketing materials and community relations/PR. Plus, my writing is supported by professional graphic design. I welcome your questions to help you achieve greater success in your campaign.

Punctuation – when to use a semi-colon

While discussing punctuation isn’t a sexy topic, knowing how to apply commas, exclamation points (hint: rarely), single quotes or double quotes, and the ever challenging semi-colon can make your copy read better. It also lends a halo effect to your topic. The wrong punctuation casts a shadow over your writing and confuses readers.

Don’t feel bad if you don’t know all the proper grammar - it is easy to learn. As a journalism student, I got my wake-up call while working as an intern at the former Dearborn Press and Guide newspaper. The society editor (Remember those ladies who liked to lunch and knew everyone in town?) told me that my copy was full of errors. Being a young, impetuous writer, I thought that correcting poor grammar was the job of an editor. But from that point forward, I started to pay more attention to the nuances of the English language – learning how to spell words correctly and how to punctuate. My guides were “The Associated Press Stylebook” and “The Elements of Style” by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White.

Correct punctuation isn't as riveting as spring flowers
on a cactus, but it still makes a great impression. (Photo: Liz Cezat)

The best way to learn how to punctuate a sentence correctly is to read books or esteemed news magazines: “The Economist,” “Time,” and the “New York Times” to cite some of the best. You can no longer rely on newspaper articles since they cut the editing staff. I hate to call them out, but The Huffington Post has “shake your head” poor editing. Often times, when reading an article in HP or another online news source, you may need to change a “by” to a “my” because it appeared correct in spell-check (good technical cross-check) but neither the writer nor the editor bothered to proofread and correct the error.

Mistakes will be made; no doubt about it. But learning from your grammatical errors will build your knowledge base. I was working on editing the resume of a University of Michigan graduate and she didn’t know some basic grammar. I said to her, “Look, you need to commit this to memory. You can’t keep making the same mistakes.” Smart, educated people need to learn the basic grammar rules and apply them. 

After all this harping about getting it right, I’m going to provide five tips to keep you as sharp as an exclamation point.

1.     Commas – use them in a series (Example: She needed bananas, walnuts and flour for the bread recipe.) A comma is needed before “and” if the sequence of items is followed by  another sequence. (Example: He wanted to buy an umbrella, boots and a raincoat, and he also needed to get books, pencils and a calculator for his daughter.) Also use a comma if the sentence could be confusing without it or you want readers to pause. (Example: It was a fun, tasteful and successful event, and one that our supporters will surely remember.)

2.     Use of single quotes – Consider them to be interior quotes that are used within a quoted sentence. Example: Sue said, “I am so excited about the new iPhone that I told my father, ‘I would pay $1,000 for it.’” (Here, I ended with the standard quote mark after the single quote so it actually looks like three quote marks. If it was an indirect quote, it could be stated: “I am so excited about the new iPhone that I told my father I would pay $1,000 for it.”)

3.     The apostrophe (‘) – Use this for all contractions: they are= they’re; it is=it’s; we are=we’re; you have=you’ve; you are=you’re (… there are many more examples)

4.     Semi-colon – When two sentences are closely linked together, you can either make it two sentences or one sentence, joined by a semi-colon. It also signals the end of a series of items or a sequence of name/title attributions. (Example: He gave written copies of the report to Michael Mulligan, VP of Finance; Carol Spasek, Chief Information Officer; and Dick Black, VP of Human Resources.) (Example: The audits were impeccably completed; not a decimal point was out of place. It could also read: The audits were impeccably completed. Not a decimal point was out of place.)

5.   Exclamation point – Typically let the words do the talking (Joy. Peace. Love. These values are all that we need to be happy.) Compare that to: (Joy! Peace! Love! These values are all that we need to be happy.) It sounds hyper, doesn’t it? If you feel like you must use an exclamation point, use it only when it adds emphasis. (Example: Lucy’s gift of a trip around the world made her parents so excited!) Basically, it’s a once in a lifetime event to use an exclamation point. Only slightly kidding.

This blog post is only intended to cover the most common errors and bring some levity to the topic.
There are many online grammar sites that address the thousands of usage questions in more detail. Here is a sampling:

Commonly confused words (great guide, with examples of usage too):  http://grammar.about.com/od/words/a/UsageGlossary.htm

http://www.writingcentre.uottawa.ca/hypergrammar/pronouns.html

When to use commas: http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/commas.asp.

I welcome your stories about how improving your grammar has made a difference in your career.

Listening opens the doors to enriched communication

Having a conversation is one of the best ways to connect with others. The person speaking taps into what’s on their mind, turns it into words and phrases, and lets it roll off their tongue – into the air, hovering just outside their lips for someone close by to hear. Sometimes, their words may be projected into a larger space so a group of people can hear. For an even larger audience, a microphone may be used to amplify those words. Once expended, the message is received by the listener.

That’s where things can get messy. Here are some reasons why:

1. I kind of get it, but I don’t hear too well. I smile my biggest smile, like I totally get it. (Unfortunately, the speaker just told me that his beloved Aunt Edna has died.)
2. I am listening but also thinking about the lavish Greek salad with grilled shrimp I’m going to eat for lunch so I nod like I’m listening. Half of me is listening; the other half is already out to lunch.
3. I let their words enter my brain but don't make an effort to fully understand what they are saying. I'm really not interested. (Happens a lot with sales pitches.)
4. Finally they are finished … now it’s my turn to talk – about something totally unrelated to what they said.

What you really want the listener to think and do is the following: I get it. I am in synchrony with you, the speaker, whose words fall like golden petals onto my receptive ears. I even ask a follow-up question about what was said.

Networking provides a good setting to practice
listening skills. Photo by Liz Cezat.

Which of these methods of listening do you normally use? We are all guilty of using poor listening techniques at one time or another. However, to really get the most out of our relationships – whether they are professional, personal or even a casual conversation with someone we’ve never met before – we need to focus on what’s being said. It’s a direct connection when the speaker gets a response to their message … rather than having you, the listener, simply interject what was lingering in your mind as you semi-listened to what they were saying.

It sounds so simple, yet it is hard to do. You don’t just listen with your ears, you also listen with your heart and your mind.

If you listen with your mind, you often have a ready response because you start focusing on that topic and bring to mind all that you already know about it. You prepare to formulate your comments – often as the speaker is still talking. If you know a lot about the topic, you might even interrupt the speaker with your vast knowledge; so excited are you to share and convince.

If you listen with your heart, you let the speaker’s message enter your being. You absorb it. You process it. Only then can you react to it. If you meld it with some touching experience that you’ve had, then you can begin to empathize with the speaker. That connection can be truly profound and even life changing.

Certain messages need to be listened to with the mind only, the heart only or a combination of the two. It’s a skill – one that you can learn to develop. This skill will broaden your capacity for compassion. It will provide greater understanding of problems that – at initial probing – have no solutions. By cultivating an environment of enriched communication, you and the most important people in your life can reach an extraordinarily fertile field of connectivity. When you reach this level of communication, it can be euphoric.

By being fully receptive to what is being said, you are practicing one of the highest forms of communication. This can be a springboard toward reaching greater goals. Imagine how this can improve just one aspect of your life. The best news is that you don’t have to be born with the gift of being a great communicator. You can learn how to do it.

Check out our seminars on better communication, customized to your workplace or association. Call (734) 416-5915 or send an e-mail inquiry from our “Contact us” page.

Do you get cold feet when you have to make a cold call?

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How often do you need to pick up the phone and call someone you don’t know to ask either for funds, a big favor or new business?

Unless you are super outgoing and love to reach out to strangers, this part of the job description can be a huge challenge.

The first step is to engage with the person you are calling as a fellow human being rather than a name to be talked to and then checked off your list. Find out something about them.  A quick check on LinkedIn or “goggling” their name will get you some basic information to build on.

As the owner of a marketing communications firm, I often need to
make cold calls to line up projects such as this e-mail seminar.

If you need to call a lot of people, write a script that will guide your request. In your script, tell them who you are and the name of your firm/organization. Then, spend about one minute telling them why you are calling. Pause. Tell them what you want from them. Is it a donation? A favor? Their business?

You need to substantiate this “ask.” What’s in it for them? How will it solve their problem? How will helping your organization be something they will be honored to do?

Don’t read your script, rather “act it out” with a smile. Your fresh approach will be most welcome. If you rehearse it enough, it becomes natural. If it doesn’t sound natural, rewrite it. Try to get an engaging element in your request that really piques their interest.

If it’s a prospecting call, what problem can you solve for them? If you are calling on the same type of client, such as a manufacturer or bank, ask key questions, germane to their industry, to determine if they are a good prospect for your services. Mention some ways in which your services can address their problem. Close by offering to send more information via e-mail, scheduling an appointment or sending a proposal.

If you are calling to raise funds, you must convey to this individual why he/she or their company should give to your organization. Help the prospective donor visualize your request by making the solution come alive. For example, if your organization builds homes, talk about much independence a family gains when they can move out of a shelter and into their own home.

Typically development officers and small business owners make their own calls. However, professional service companies do well to identify a knowledgeable, upbeat member of their staff to make the calls and schedule a good time for a partner or “rainmaker” to follow-up either by phone or a visit. The staff person should make the calls on the day that the partner/rainmaker is in, on the off chance that the connection can be made by phone right then.

For high-level contacts, lawyers, accountants and other professional service providers can make the connection first via e-mail or LinkedIn to gauge their interest. After some exchange of e-mails, tell the contact you want to talk by phone and schedule a time. 

With websites and social media, an initial meeting often isn't needed to get an affirmative answer to your request. Although, for high-value requests, scheduling an appointment often establishes a greater level of trust and is a good start to a working relationship. 

Everyone is busy; so if you need to call multiple times to reach an individual, don’t be deterred. Be pleasantly persistent, and you’ll succeed more times than not in getting the job, contract or donation.

Happy dialing. I’m interested to hear about your results.