Month: August 2015

I have a client who is a really, really large Fortune 500-size insurance company. And their Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is Karen—not her real name because I haven’t told her I’m writing this (not that she’d have a big problem or anything). Karen is unique among marketing people. She would willingly admit that she’s no creative genius. She’s not, thank goodness, a female version of Don Draper. She’s not going to invent the next Coke advertising campaign. But she’s very smart. She has good ideas. She’s hired good people who also have good marketing ideas. And she’s something else, which is very unique: she’s an accountant. An accountant! She spent a number of years at a Big 6 accounting firm. An accountant as Chief Marketing Officer?

Welcome to the 21st century, where accountants are taking over marketing. Karen’s not the only one. Twitter’s Chief Financial Officer runs their marketing operations. And even me, yes me…. I’m a CPA who runs a company that sells CRM software. Are the accountants taking over marketing? It’s a trend. And it makes sense. Here’s why.

A CRM system is just a database. That’s it. No matter what the software makers say, the data just resides in a database. And it’s all about the data. Managers can’t do their job without good data. Salesmen can’t sell. Marketers can’t market. To a finance person like Karen, her database is every bit as important as her company’s financial statements. It’s relied on in her case by hundreds of people. Communications have to be correct. Demographics need to be on target. When an accounting firm certifies a financial as audited they’ve done the necessary procedures to make sure that the information in the financial statements is accurate and complete. Same goes for a marketing database.

The internal controls over data are critical. Financial managers know that the data coming out of a database is only as good as the data going in. That’s why finance people become experts at understanding internal controls. They understand the procedures and policies that must be in place so that a database has accurate and complete data being entered and is being checked and verified all the time. In Karen’s case, she’s always checking and double-checking the sources of her marketing data— whether it came in over the web, was purchased as part of a list, or was manually entered by someone in the field. She has controls to alert administrators when fields are empty or have not been updated after a certain period of time. She’s hired developers to write scripts that check and fix duplicate data. Data to her is the most important thing. She learned that in the financial world. And she’s bringing it to her marketing job.

The metrics using data is critical. In the end it’s all about reports. And good financial people know all about reports. And so do marketing people, which is why Karen is so good at her job. Every marketing move she makes needs to have results. Some of it is intangible—exposure, branding, eyeballs. Most of it is tangible. By that I mean leads. Karen studies which campaigns get the most responses, which emails are opened more frequently, which links are clicked on more often. Karen tracks where her leads come from and how fast it takes to follow-up and resolve them, either positively or negatively. She wants to know the level of engagement on her socials sites, the growth in followers, how many likes, and how many fans. All of this data is at the heart of every financial person like Karen. And as well it should be for every CMO too.

Today’s marketing is data driven. It’s big data. Large campaigns. Profiling. Demographics. Interactions. Responses. Leads. Closed sales. Lost sales. A good marketing person isn’t just about being creative. It’s also about managing the data to track the results from one’s creativity. And that’s why, in many cases, finance people like Karen make great CMOs.

 

At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a huge variety of verticals. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.

 
About the Author: Gene Marks is a small business owner, technology expert, author and columnist. He writes regularly for leading US media outlets such as The New York Times, Forbes, Inc. Magazine and Entrepreneur. He has authored five books on business management and appears regularly on Fox News, Fox Business, MSNBC and CNBC. Gene runs a ten-person CRM and technology consulting firm outside of Philadelphia. Learn more at genemarks.com

Image courtesy of XXXXX at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Manage leads and contacts. Build your sales pipeline. Track project activity. Whatever the “to do” list of the day brings; you’re in the business of doing business, not spinning your wheels fighting with complex tools to accomplish everyday administrative tasks. It’s one of the many reasons small businesses like yours chose Insightly to handle daily CRM tasks—it’s about sensibility and simplicity for the sake of saving time.

A Selfie’s Worth a Thousand Words… And Maybe a Smartwatch

So, how are you using Insightly to save time? We want to know! Enter our #LoveMyTime contest and a Smartwatch or an Insightly t-shirt could be in your future. A picture’s worth a thousand words, so we’ve made it fast and simple for you to share your time-saving story.

Snap, Post, Done

Here’s how to enter the #LoveMyTime contest:

1. Snap a selfie of what you love to do with all the time Insightly saves you
2. Post your selfie to your Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter account with the hashtag #LoveMyTime
3. Sit back and relax

No judgements here. Well, okay, maybe a few. Once you post your selfie showing what you love to do with the time Insightly saves you, we’ll select a group of finalists. We’ll then hand the task over to the Insightly Community and let a jury of your peers choose the grand prize winner. Enter the #LoveMyTime contest today.

Turn It Up Tuesday: Tips from Insightly to Take Your Business to 11

Welcome to Turn It Up Tuesday, where we bring you 3 weekly tips—a tip on running your business, a tip on using Insightly CRM, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!

	Turn Off Email Notifications to be More Productive
	It’s easy to feel productive when you’re sending and receiving a bunch of emails, but the day can quickly slip away if you’re constantly being interrupted by emails. A large majority of emails do not require an immediate response, and if they do people will often call. Checking email frequently can harm your productivity. According to a study done by Loughborough University, it takes an average of 64 seconds to fully recover and get back to your work after being interrupted by an email. This time can really add up over the course of the day. To check email less frequently – you could even try out a product such as Inbox Pause to have your email set to deliver at 3-4 times a day.
	Organize Projects With Categories
	Take organizing projects to a deeper level by grouping them into categories. For example, if you often attend tradeshows as a vendor and organize customer events, your project categories might include “Tradeshow” and “Customer Event.” Your Insightly administrator can create and add new categories by navigating to System Settings > Categories page. Once the project and categories are set up, you can easily identify and filter the categorized projects when looking at the project list. Tasks related to each project can also be categorized with the same categories or different categories specific to tasks. By associating projects with categories, you can keep relevant information grouped together and easy to find and view.
	Goal Setting
	If you were to select three people you greatly admire for a particular attribute or accomplishment (e.g. athletic skills, integrity, tenacity, business success, etc.) and sit down and ask them what their secret to success is, you’d quickly recognize a common theme—goal setting. Setting goals is tantamount to having a road map to get you from point A to point Z. It turns out, however, that very few people actually take the time to sit down and set goals. In a study focusing on the 1979 Harvard MBA program graduate students were asked “have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” Shockingly, 84% of respondents had no goals at all. If you need a cheerleader to keep you honest and motivated in setting up and meeting your goals, an article published in Harvard Business Review shows that bringing a significant other into the process can greatly increase your odds of success. Write your goals down—be specific and detailed. Start small—set three goals over the next 12 months, for example. Be realistic—if you’re a weekend athlete in your middle years, it’s highly unlikely make it to the WNBA or NBA. Set milestones, chart your progress, and make adjustments along the way as needed. Don’t beat yourself up for making mistakes or hitting obstacles along the way. Reflect on what worked and what didn’t as you were working towards a specific goal.

 

Check out Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial right now.

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About the author: Marta Bright is Insightly’s Content Manager.

A buyer persona, also known as a customer avatar, is a representation of your company’s ideal customer. Depending on your industry and target market, you may have several buyer personas to create. When you create a persona for each portion of your target market, you can better refine everything in your marketing and sales tactics by writing copy as if you were speaking directly to a live person with defined wants, needs, likes, and dislikes.

Your buyer persona should include: who your ideal buyers are, the roles they play in their personal and professional lives, their goals and challenges, demographics, and a story. The more information you can work into the generalized persona, the more targeted your marketing can become. Dig deep, creating specific personas for each possible spin-off of the general customer.

With a highly-targeted buyer persona, you can avoid sending blanket messages to all customers by creating a more personalized approach to marketing. An astonishing 86% of shoppers say personalization influences their purchases to some extent, while one-quarter of shoppers admit it significantly influences their purchasing.

Take for instance, Skytap, a provider of cloud automation solutions. After implementing a content marketing strategy that involved tailoring content to various buyer personas, the company saw a 124% increase in leads from all channels both online and offline, a 97% increase in leads from online marketing, and a 55% increase in organic search traffic.

Who is Your Ideal Customer?

What elements or traits would your ideal customer have? Write down what you think would be useful to know about your customer, and use your ideas to guide you through the rest of the buyer persona exercise.

For example, a company in the kitchen and bath design industry needs a customer who is a homeowner and wealthy enough to cover the cost of designer services in addition to the cost of the remodel itself. They would also someone who lives in their service area.

But kitchen and bath designers don’t just want to restrict marketing efforts to homeowners. It’s also a good idea to target construction companies and real estate agents who work directly with customers who are becoming homeowners.

Your ideal customer will not only buy your product or service, but offer repeat business and become your brand ambassador, sending friends, family, and colleagues your way whenever possible.

What Does a Day in Their Life Look Like?

Think about details in your ideal customer’s life that would make your product or service attractive. Is the customer looking for something that will save them time because they’re so busy they barely have time to breathe? Is the customer looking for something that will save them money because they’re interested in stretching their budget, or saving for the future?

Use available information to craft a story about your ideal customer. Give the customer a name, profession, family life, etc. Weave all of the details you have about the customer into the story.

In the exercise equipment industry, you’re likely looking at customers interested in losing weight or staying healthy who are too busy to go to a local gym and have enough disposable income to invest in exercise equipment.

Let’s name your ideal customer Jim. He’s 34 years old and decently healthy, but worried about aging. He has three kids, ages 7, 5, and 2. He wants to stay in shape to be able to keep up with his kids and see his future grandchildren grow up.

He has a full-time third shift job, and there is no gym nearby with childcare. He decides to invest in a treadmill for his basement. After a hard day at work, he wants to be able to go downstairs, run a few miles on the treadmill, shower, and go to bed so he can be up to spend the afternoon and evening with his family.

Jim will not only buy more equipment in the future, his children are likely to emulate his healthy habits, giving you a foot in the door on the next generation of consumers.

What Demographics Do They Fall Into?

Your target customer’s demographics are important to the overall picture, because they help in targeting the right people in various advertising campaigns. In Facebook ads alone, there are an almost overwhelming number of demographic details available, allowing you to get as specific as necessary. Target by basic demographics and flesh out your profile by expanding into a variety of interests and behaviors.

Beyond things like age range, location, salary, and education level, look at specific demographics that pertain to your industry. While a customer’s living arrangements (rental, homeowner, potential homebuyer) don’t matter to say, a movie rental business, they definitely matter to the real estate agent, and to the kitchen and bath designer.

What are Their Goals and Challenges?

Where your customers are headed in life is a key piece of information, knowledge that gives you a chance to address how your product or service will help them reach their goals and get past their challenges.

For Jim, our busy dad who’s in the market for exercise equipment, his goal is to become fit with a small time investment every day. His challenges include finding the time to workout and financing the purchase. He has the income to support the purchase, but doesn’t want to spend a huge chunk of change at once. He’s done a considerable amount of outside research online, and isn’t really sure your product is best for his needs.

You can assist Jim by offering advice on fitting the workout into his day – highlighting how your machine is designed to work all core muscle groups so he can burn calories and see results in less time than competitor treadmills. To address his financing issue, offer a finance plan that allows him to make affordable monthly payments, plus free delivery and setup if he buys from you.

How CRM Can Help

With the CRM market expected to hit $24.22 billion by 2018, it’s a sign big data is here to stay. For existing businesses refining their marketing efforts, CRM data is a goldmine of information that can assist in crafting the perfect buyer persona.

For new businesses that haven’t collected customer data yet, CRM is still an incredibly valuable tool. In the initial persona creation phase, turn to your market research, competitor analysis, and social media for the details you need to define your customers. You’ll add more details as you notice common traits in your best customers and as your business grows and changes. Over time, the data you add to your CRM will bring your buyer personas to life.

With freshly crafted buyer personas in hand, review your marketing materials to ensure they reflect the customers you’re trying to reach. Closely examine your business cards, website, direct mail, pay-per-click campaigns, and social media for accuracy. You may discover you’ve been marketing to the wrong customers, and need to adjust accordingly.

 

At Insightly, we have a CRM for all kinds of businesses and all kinds of users. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.

Turn It Up Tuesday: Tips from Insightly to Take Your Business to 11

Welcome to Turn It Up Tuesday, where we bring you 3 weekly tips—a tip on running your business, a tip on using Insightly CRM, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips on using the right language with customers and with yourself.

The Language of Customer Communication

The language you use when communicating with your sales prospects and customers has an impact on how well your company gets and retains business. There’s lots of advice about body language for in-person meetings, and much of it is a little over the top—you’re not facing a wild bear, after all, just another human being. Stick to the basics: smile, make eye contact, sit up straight, and take a deep breath before you begin. Smiling is just as important when you’re on the phone, and always try to be attentive. Listening will help you assess your customer’s needs, knowledge, and mood to respond appropriately. By paying attention to the details, you’ll be able to choose the right words, avoid jargon that may be confusing, and speak to the points that matter. By communicating well, you’ll ensure continued success for you and your company.   Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Set Insightly to Your Language

If you’re one of Insightly’s many thousands of international customers, our CRM might just speak your language. Our default setting is English, which is the language of most of our users, but Insightly also includes versions for German, Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. When a user changes the language setting in Insightly, all labels, like tabs and field names, will be displayed in the language of choice. Each user can select the profile menu in the upper-right of Insightly, click on User Settings, and scroll down to the language selection option. If you or your staff would prefer to see Insightly in any of the available languages, flip the switch and update your CRM.

Be Mindful of Your Language

Mindfulness practices are all the rage, and for good reason: there is heaps of evidence that mindfulness-based meditation and the practice of being mindful make people healthier and happier. A dramatic impact can come from becoming aware of the things you tell yourself on a daily—if not minute-by-minute—basis. Thoughts are fast, and we often judge ourselves and others a bit quickly without fully processing a situation. To see how you think, pay attention to the way you phrase things when speaking or writing and you’ll start spotting habitual or negative patterns, like all-or-nothing thinking and jumping to conclusions. As you practice mindfulness, you can start catching the thoughts that slow you down, and then question their reliability. You can learn to challenge the thoughts that don’t seem to add up, or let them go without letting them bog you down. Such practices can lead to more practical approaches to any challenge, with the ultimate effects of more clarity, reduced stress, a stronger immune system, and so much more.

 

Check out Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial right now.

 

Send Us Your Tips

Would you like to share your tips with Insightly customers? Send them to us!
If we use one in our weekly feature we’ll send you a $10 Amazon Gift Card!

Contact us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or send us an email.

 
About the author: Tony Roma is Insightly’s Content Manager. He’s been helping businesses implement software solutions for over ten years.

Building rapport and creating connections with customers are still a key focus in today’s selling environment. It can happen in an instant. You can also blow it right at “Hi, my name is…”—and once it’s gone, you probably won’t get another chance to forge a bond. So how do you build instant rapport with customers? We’ve broken it down to the following eight steps:

1. Use Your Resources The world wide web may be full of a lot of useless data (all the swans in England are the property of the queen; flies jump backwards during takeoff; 11% of the global population is left-handed…). Yet when it comes to finding out about a prospect, the Tower of Babel that’s the internet comes in very handy, often providing you with insights into who your prospect is.
    
   Invest a bit of time researching who you’re going to be meeting with. Look at their Twitter account or public Facebook page for clues as to their hobbies and interests. Connect with them on LinkedIn. From their LinkedIn page, note where they worked previously, their alma mater, any articles they’ve posted, or any other relevant info you might be able to refer to during your meeting. Is there a common denominator, such as a company you both worked for at some point? 
2. Keep an Open Mind If your schedule doesn’t allow you to look up the prospect beforehand, or if they’re one of those folks who keep themselves off the radar of the Net, just keep an open mind when meeting with that individual. Listen to what they say, what they omit, how they say what they say, her or his tone of voice, delivery, and personal style. Shoot the breeze for a bit if you get a friendly, outgoing vibe from them. If they’re reserved and “all business,” skip the weather channel chitchat—even if hail the size of soccer balls is coming down, they’re not going to want to talk about anything other than what they need and what you can do for them.
    
   Regardless of whether you know a little something-something about the customer before the meeting, paying attention to verbal and nonverbal clues is best practice for any customer interaction. 


Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

3. Consider Your Target All people are created equal, but not all customers are the same. Train yourself to recognize the Mr. or Ms. Right prospect, and then adapt your style and approach to meet her/his needs. After you’ve moved your dream prospect into your pipeline, be a trusted advisor and accommodate their particular issues and ways of doing things. 
4. Listening Can Make All the Difference News flash! This just in: Sales folks are talkers. In fact, we often like to be “on.” However, much as you might enjoy the “you show,” park your healthy ego and let the customer talk. If you allow them the room to explain in detail the dilemmas they’re facing, you’ll instill a sense of trust in them. Helpful person that you are, you might find yourself wanting to jump in and interrupt with a problem-solving insight. Hey, don’t! Instead, take notes. When it’s appropriate for you to speak, you’ll buy a lot of first-impression points by repeating back to them what they’ve highlighted as their business challenges. Not only will they know you’ve been actively listening, you’ll learn more because you have been actively listening. 
5. Use the Customer’s Name During the conversation, use the customer’s name often. People like to hear their own name spoken back to them. It creates instant rapport, a sense of security, and a feeling of individuality. 
6. Active Listening is Key Unless your inbox is on fire, don’t rush the customer. And don’t tune them out. You may have been around the sales block a couple of times and have put your foot in a thousand doors, but don’t put it in your mouth where the prospect is concerned. Park your assumptions in the back lot next to your ego, allow the customer to get all their thoughts out, and pay close attention to their words.
    
   When you’re trying to build rapport and truly connect with a customer, there’s a real danger in coming off as impatient. If the customer doesn’t feel that you have the time, attention span, or inclination to stick with them to the conclusion of what they’re saying, they’ll lose confidence in your ability to know what it is they truly need and want over the broader “conversation,” i.e., a working relationship with them. 
7. Positivity Creates Bonds Whether meeting with a prospect in person or over the phone, remember to smile. Positivity is your friend—it will create a bond between you and the customer. People don’t want to do business when negativity is in the picture. They will especially get their backs up when someone is rude, or even just perceived to be rude. So play nice, be friendly, and flash your pearly whites. 
8. Consider the Wrap-Up Toward the end of the meeting, make certain to ask if there is anything further you can do for the customer. Also, ensure that everything that needed covering has been checked off the list. Finally, ensure that next steps are clearly mapped and understood by everyone. 

In sales, it’s almost always the case that you have only one chance to make a connection with a customer. Think of it as skydiving, with the customer as the plane and the rapport as the parachute: If the chute fails to open, you may have a back-up chute, but you will not get another chance to jump from that particular plane. Remember, before your bonding experience—sometimes even after that—the customer has no loyalty to you. That’s something you need to earn. You’ll begin to earn it by making a connection.
 

Insightly CRM has tools to help you find social profiles and manage your leads.
Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.

 
About the Author: Justin Zappulla is a Managing Partner at Janek Performance Group. He has worked hand-in-hand with a global clientele across a variety of industries and business segments including technology, finance, consumer goods, healthcare and manufacturing. With extensive sales performance management and training expertise, he works with hundreds of companies to develop and implement strategic sales performance solutions.

Justin has co-authored a book called Critical Selling: How Top Performers Accelerate the Sales Process and Close More Deals which is set to be released by Wiley Publishing in October, 2015.

Turn It Up Tuesday: Tips from Insightly to Take Your Business to 11

Welcome to Turn It Up Tuesday, where we bring you 3 weekly tips—a tip on running your business, a tip on using Insightly CRM, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!

Build a (Better) Website

In today’s world, an internet presence is vital to any business, but about half of all small businesses still don’t have a website. While it’s always smart to start off with a good LinkedIn or Facebook page, a website can be a huge generator of new leads. Start with a simple and effective site that includes your address, phone number, or email address throughout. Keeping things simple, with a description of your products or services without flashy video or audio, will help your customers navigate the site and find the information they’re looking for. There are a number of options to build your own site—like WordPress, SquareSpace, and Weebly—and you’ll need to define your needs to find the right tool for the job. For example, your requirements will get more complicated if customers will be ordering products directly from your site. As your marketing budget increases, you might want to hire a web designer, a copywriter, and maybe an SEO (search engine optimization) expert to help customers find you in web searches. Just like any other part of your business, your website will change over time, so keep it in mind and keep it updated as your business grows. Websites image by Salvatore Vuono. Construction image by stockimages. Courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Manage Contractors and Vendors in Insightly

CRM doesn’t stand for contractor relationship management, but you can use Insightly to keep track of any contact who’s connected to your business. By adding contractors and other contributors as contacts in your CRM, and then using project records to manage the work that’s being done, you can link the two records together to keep track of who’s doing what. Have a vendor that’s supplying the decorations for your event planning service? Add them as a contact, create a project for an event, and link them together. When you create the link, you can define the role of the person you’re linking to. And as you coordinate your efforts, you can add notes to the project, create reminder tasks for yourself, and save emails to Insightly by forwarding them to the project’s mailbox address or using the Insightly Sidebar. With so many options, you’re sure to come up with a way to track your workflow and stay on top of your jobs.

Spruce Up Your Space with a Redesign

Just like an online space gives customers a feel for a business, your real-world space has an impact on how you feel every day. Redesigning your space can run from inexpensive tweaks to a big-budget remodel. On a small budget, it’s easy enough to add a little style by starting with small steps, like adding a few throw pillows and some new paint. And if you have a special interest or hobby, you can probably repurpose materials that have a connected story behind them to decorate your place, such as tools or wine crates. If you’re ready to invest in a big upgrade, go online to come up with ideas and research local architects and interior designers to help you plan things out. You’ll want to have your ideas laid out before you find and hire a contractor, which will also take preparation before, during, and after the project.

 

Manage your projects at work or at home with Insightly’s project management features.
Check out Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial, today.

 

Send Us Your Tips

Would you like to share your tips with Insightly customers? Send them to us!
If we use one in our weekly feature we’ll send you a $10 Amazon Gift Card!

Contact us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or send us an email.

 
About the author: Tony Roma is Insightly’s Content Manager. He’s been helping businesses implement software solutions for over ten years.

Fit Small Business, an online community dedicated to helping small businesses succeed, has chosen Insightly as the number one alternative to Salesforce for small businesses. Fit Small Business recognizes that Salesforce is a costly and complicated CRM that has far more features than the average business requires. Insightly has all the features that most businesses need “for 1/10th the price of Salesforce, and given that it’s much easier to use, you also save a lot of time training.”

Image courtesy of mapichai at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

With integrations for Gmail, Outlook 2013, MailChimp, QuickBooks Online and more, Insightly makes CRM powerful, accessible and affordable. Jeremy Marsan also notes: “If you do need more advanced tools like webform integration, mass emailing or workflow automation, Insightly gives you these as well, along with project management, which you won’t find from Salesforce.”

See the original article on Fit Small Business for the full write-up:
Best Salesforce Alternatives For Small Businesses

Check out Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial right now.

I dislike small talk. (I don’t like to use the word ‘hate’ so I’m being restrained here.) I mean I really, really dislike small talk. It’s tedious, feels useless, and comes across as boring, never mind insincere.

I hear that comment almost every day and I personally feel that way when I walk into a networking event. Ugh! What can I think of to say to this person? I live in Boston and yes we had a horrible winter, but I’m tired of talking about it.

Maybe it’s because I never had children of my own that I find them so fascinating and fun to watch, especially when they’re communicating with each other. Kids that are pre-verbal come across like they have so much to say and just can’t get it out. In case you missed this YouTube video, here are twins engaging in conversation:

What I find inspiring about watching these two is that they’re not overthinking what they’re going to say next. And because it’s in a language others (e.g., adults) can’t understand, it’s fun to imagine what they’re really talking about. It seems to be a meaningful and engaging conversation that ends with them trying to stand on their heads.

The conversation starts with one guy walking up to the other one and simply talking. When did we learn to stop doing that? Just because they’re small, doesn’t mean they stop at “small” talk (bad joke).

What if we imagine someone starts with “big talk”? What would that look like? What about these conversation openers?

• When are you going to sign a contract and we can start the project?
• What were your revenues last year?
• Do you like your current accountant, lawyer, website host provider?
• I’ve got a quota to make by the end of the week, want to buy anything?
• Or how about this one: Will you be my best friend?

No hello or how are you—just dive right in.

Obviously those are exaggerations. Those opening lines wouldn’t work professionally or personally. We need to build rapport first. Here are a few tips I use to help me get through the angst of small talk:

• Cultivate a list of networking buddies. I use the tagging feature in Insightly to keep this list up-to-date. These are folks you see at events or can invite to events with you. Ahead of time, we eat a quick bite and then we can talk about what the other one is looking for and then be a lookout scout.
• If I’m on my own, I start with two words: “Tell me.” For example, Tell me how you know [name of organization hosting the event]. Tell me where you work. Tell me how you found out about xyz event.
• Find out what they’re looking for and try to help. It’s not about you! The other person is there for a reason. Mentally stroll through your Insightly CRM and begin to think about doing an e-introduction. This is an excellent way to stay on someone’s radar.
• Volunteer. It may sound weird, but I really like to hand out name tags. I’m behind a desk/table, get to say hello quickly and be reminded of someone’s name, and then we’re both on to the next conversation. (You can create a tag for “volunteer.”)
• Talk to people who are alone. They appreciate it and are often interesting but intimidated as well.
• Deep breathing exercises. I often stand along a wall or inside of the elevator and do extended breathing exercises. If I’ve had a bad day or difficult conversation earlier, I clench my fist and release it after 30 seconds. (That sounds like a short time—it’s really pretty long.)
• Practice! This may sound odd but I encourage you to talk with people at the airport when you’re waiting at security. Here’s why:
  • You are very safe. There are cameras everywhere!
  • You have a shared goal: getting through security.
  • Test opening conversation starters:
    • Traveling for fun or work?
    • Is Boston home?
    • Tell me how you like your roller bag? (Turns out people have strong opinions about their luggage. Who knew?!)
  • Another practice location is on public transportation. Carry a map and ask a question of the person near you. (Remember, your personal safety is always #1.)
    • Can you recommend a restaurant?
    • Is there a must-see event/location that only locals know about?

Seriously, the best tip I can give you is that people are there for themselves. The faster you find that out, the more talking they’ll do and they less you’ll need to do.
 

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About the Author: Diane Darling knows the value of relationships and how to build them. The author of McGraw-Hill’s definitive book on networking, The Networking Survival Guide. Diane speaks and trains thousands of people each year on ways to build relationships, leading to opportunities and growth.