The Piano Inside My Brain

When you help out a salesperson, does it make you feel dirty?

Most people have a negative view towards sales people. And no one likes to be “sold.”

But everyone likes loves to buy.

So would you go out of your way to actually help out someone in sales?

Would you help the nice family that owns the wonderful Italian restaurant by recommending it to a friend?

Would you help your niece or nephew that just graduated college by passing along their resume to a colleague?

Would you help your co-worker by speaking on their behalf to your boss?

No one feels dirty helping out someone they like and trust. So maybe the job of marketing is to create an environment of trust and friendship.

“For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three.”
— Alice Kahn

How deep is your email inbox? Seriously, how deep.

I’ve been there from time to time, but I’ve been proactively working to keep my inbox as close to empty as possible.

If your inbox is over 2000 messages deep, you might need to do something radical.

Perhaps you should declare email bankruptcy. Here is how:

• Step 1: Select all messages in your inbox. (Ctrl+A on a PC or Cmd+A on a Mac)
• Step 2: Delete the selected messages.
• Step 3: Send an apologetic email to your close contacts and ask them to resend anything important.

It is quite refreshing. Don’t worry, people will understand.

Social networks can be strange. Especially Twitter.

Networks like Facebook or LinkedIn require that connections be mutual. That is to say if I want to connect to you, you have to accept and then connect to me. So when I “friend” someone or “connect” it is a two-way street.

Twitter is different. On Twitter, you can follow anyone. (At least anyone that has a public profile.) If you want to follow my “tweets” you simply click the “follow” button and you are set. I’ll receive a notification that you are a new follower, but I don’t have to return the favor.

The results are interesting.

Guy Kawasaki and Merlin Mann both have very interesting Twitter streams: useful and fun. Guy followed me back, Merlin didn’t return the favor. But it doesn’t matter. I still like reading both.

There are people who follow my Twitter stream that I don’t follow back. But if there is an opportunity to have a conversation, I will follow back. I’ve even dug into some other interesting conversations to “meet” new “friends” on Twitter.

I’ve had some fun, interesting, educational, goofball conversations with people from the Twitterverse. And some of these conversations have spawned communication beyond Twitter, both email and phone conversations.

But once the conversation becomes two-way, you realize that there are a lot of very good humans out there.

And this “Not a two-way street” that is Twitter has spawned new friendships and even some new poetry.

If you like cars and technology, this is very cool.

For those of you that happen to be female and live in the Greater Philadelphia Area, I will be speaking at the event for the Women of Wit and Wisdom this Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 5:30pm at the Pyramid Club in Philadelphia.

Using LinkedIn to Promote Your Business

Is it 12 or 73 invitations that you have received from LinkedIn so far? You have either ignored them or perhaps created an account. So now what do you and you 4 connections do next?

Learn to use LinkedIn to improve your reputation online:

• Create powerful connections for business networking
• Give and receive recommendations
• Promote yourself by answering questions
• Create opportunities for new business

What: Guest Speaker, Dinner & Networking
Date: Thursday, June 26, 2008
Time: 5:30-8pm
Location: Pyramid Club, 1735 Market Street, 52nd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19103-2921
Cost: $35 advance registration/Pyramid Club Members; $40 at the door. Cash bar.

On Friday, NPR’s Morning Edition ran the following segment:

Can you go a day at the office without e-mail? Employees at U.S. Cellular try to do that every Friday. A policy implemented a few years ago gives workers a respite from the e-mail avalanche.
Click to read and listen…

Interesting story considering the topic of my recent post about choosing the right messaging medium. I appreciated that the story points out the initial resistance from people, but ultimately, people made additional connections with others.

While you might not be able to force your organization, you can do this yourself, perhaps for a whole day, or even just a couple of hours.

“I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.”
— John Cleese

The Inquirer ran a one-day campaign to prove a point: print advertising still works.

The piece was seriously hysterical and I had fun sharing it. But you wouldn’t believe the letters to the editor in the Inquirer. People really need to lighten up.

(Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

Sometimes you just have to take a step back and point out the obvious.

Today was one of those times. I was in the middle of typing out a detailed email message that was going to be longer than five sentences when a blinding flash of the obvious hit me: pick up the phone.

So I did and it worked. I’m glad that I started typing the email, but very glad that I didn’t click send. Starting to type things out allowed me to collect my thoughts around a difficult conversation. When I picked up the phone, I was clear and concise and convincing. And I think the person that I talked to appreciated that.

Many business professionals carry around an iPhone, Blackberry, Treo or other smartphone. So there is the opportunity to talk, text message or email right from the palm of your hand. But it doesn’t take an email ninja to know when to use the right tool, just one simple rule:

Respect the recipient.

If you have something difficult to share with someone, don’t hide behind an email message. Yes, write a letter or create an outline to organize your thoughts at first. Hiding behind the email message will actually make it more difficult for you in the long run. My rule is that if you are having a hard time picking up the phone, you probably really need to pick up the phone.

If you need an answer right away, email is not the best choice. Yes it is true, email is seriously fast, but it also creates email inbox clutter. Most people leave hundreds or thousands of messages in their email, so if you can simply send a quick instant message with your question, you might just get an immediate answer!

Text messages are great for the one-liners that are time sensitive. Examples such as, “Caught in long meeting and running late,” or “Please stop for pizza on the way home,” or “Do not cut the blue wire.” SMS is relatively instant and if for some reason it doesn’t get through, it keeps trying. For the recipient, they get some form of a beep. If needed, responses are typically very short, such as “No prob,” “OK,” or “Too late.”

What are your best suggestions that “respect the recipient” for phone, email, IM and text messages?