Strengths and weaknesses

We all have strengths and weaknesses. Of course we need to work within our weaknesses, but in business, we should focus on our strengths.

I thought about this yesterday evening, returning home from a board of directors meeting of the Ottawa Construction Specifications Chapter where I committed to a Jan. 12 presentation on social media and online marketing.

Our son, Eric, had just arrived home from a hockey practice that I had directed his entire team (I am the team manager) to attend.

Trouble is, I had sent him -- and the entire team -- to a practice that had been rescheduled, and two other teams were booked for the ice.

The "rationalization" for this scheduling error which disrupted the lives of 15 kids (and their parents), is the league co-ordinators revised the practice schedule several times and I had an earlier version. But this is not a good excuse. My job includes a responsibility to be careful about the details. (The other teams helped out last night by allowing our team to share the ice.)

I'm simply not very good at details.

This means I would not make a very good accountant. Sure, I can grasp the big picture and make sure that the overall business can run properly, but you wouldn't want me to balance the books!

Should we focus on our weaknesses, however, and let them dominate our minds?

No. The challenge is to figure out how to use our strengths to over-ride the weaknesses.

In this case, my wife (who is a detail person) agreed to check the schedule -- then she had to call on me to show her how to read the computerized entries (my strength, her weakness).
You certainly can enlist others to help.

Other weaknesses require your own attention and effort, generally if they impede in your ability to achieve your fullest strengths.

Sometimes you just have to get experience. I don't have experience in public presentations, but know it is important to develop this ability -- so the Jan. 12 presentation is a good start. If I fail, it isn't the end of the world; if I succeed (I will . . . ) it is a stepping stone to larger things.

Finally, sometimes you need to give special effort and hard work to overcome your weaknesses. the best way to do this is to use your strengths as a motivation.

I am a competent writer, and really good at journalism, but lacked any social skills or interpersonal relationship-building talent as a young person. This could of course be a rather serious barrier to a successful life. I solved the problem by fully expressing my strengths with an African adventure -- which then allowed me the opportunity to overcome many, but not all of my weaknesses.

The basic rule is this:

Do what you love, and you do well, and you will find your weaknesses either become insignificant as others compensate, or you have the energy, resources, and ability to work around them.

But my son still gave me a (well-deserved) glare when he returned home from the practice that wasn't supposed to be.

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Finding your way: Self employment, start-up focus and marketing

Yesterday, I had coffee with a friend who I've known for many years. Formerly employed by a major corporation, over his life, his pay cheques have probably been much larger than mine (we've never discussed specific salary or income levels: bad manners to do that, of course.)

He's seen shifts, changes, bumps and grinds, and experienced the painful reality of corporate life: When decisions are made outside your control, you can be victims of corporate misfortunes not your fault.

His challenge now: He doesn't know exactly what to do, and his explorations in starting up in business for himself have had their share of disappointments.

He started work co-ordinating a renovation project (he is skilled with his hands as well as his mind). Even with a proper contract and clear processes, things went truly bad when the homeowner suddenly decided that the project would end mid-stream, immediately. Pay -- including the thousands of dollars for ordered and delivered kitchen cabinets? "No way," the homeowner said. Lawyers say he is well covered by the contract, and with changes impending increasing the small claims limits within Ontario, he is waiting a couple of months to file the legal papers. But right now he has $7,500 in kitchen cabinets.

"There are people out there willing to work for virtually nothing, and I've been offered $1,300 for the cabinets," he said. "I don't know if this is for me?"

I started the conversation, before knowing this story, asking him what he really enjoys and is good at. He said he could be a great consultant, and maybe he could be a great renovator. Well, those are two rather different career tracks.

I have a potential business/career opportunity in the consulting space. This blog (and my own expertise) are leading to plenty of initial inquires, but I haven't found a way (yet) to effectively guide these potential clients. The problem in part is that many readers here are very small businesses and start-ups (like my friend) without much money for full-scale consulting services. We need to have a system to process the leads and guide the qualified ones for revenue-generating services.

But I have an existing business, and right now the marketing from this blog is focused on guiding potential clients to the services we currently offer. They are useful, of course, but quite specialized, and I sense that while they could be of value to many readers here, the blog isn't really the best way to refer the potential clients to my current business.

I proposed to my friend that we could build a consulting business, in part, by rethinking this blog's lead management system. He expressed interest. But I didn't rush the decision.
I probed deeper to get a real sense of what he really wanted to do.

Does he really want to be a renovator, or does he really want to be a consultant (or does he want to go back to the corporate space?) Is one bad experience as a renovator dissuading him from a really rational career choice? If that is the case, I suggested he join the relevant home builders association, and budget some money (about $3,000 to $5,000) for marketing to build a brand and distinguish himself from the low-ballers. It won't be easy, I told him, but it is the way to go if he really wants to work in that field.

I explained to him that I have always had the good fortune of being "dumbly narrow". In other words, from when I was 10 years old, I knew that I wanted to be a journalist and publisher. It took a while to fulfill these visions, but ultimately I found my way. With the decision in hand, I developed the necessary supporting skills and eventually had my own business.

I could push him to work on the consulting project, and he might be really good at that, but equally I listened to his "heart" and realized that it is wrong to sell this too hard.

So what should he do? Where should he focus? And how can he make the commitment to the course he wants to take, with the ups and downs, and the frustrations and economic risk?
These are easier questions to ask than answer. It is easy to say "go where your heart tell you to go" but there are still painful choices. Life isn't easy at the start-up stage; and things go wrong.

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Humble Pie

Yesterday, in baring my soul about the challenges of converting this blog's construction marketing leads to business, I inadvertently practiced one of the most effective marketing principals, in admitting my flaws.

After the posting, two readers sent some truly constructive suggestions (I will quote from their emails once I receive their permission to share their insights publicly), and we received several highly qualified leads which are worthy of follow-up.

Sometimes it makes sense to be humble in your marketing. The reason is authenticity. Most of us know no one (or almost no one) is perfect; by getting down to earth and showing our weaknesses and vulnerabilities, we ultimately are more credible. The key in describing these weaknesses is to frame them contextually so they actually highlight your strengths.

I first learned of the principal of admitting weaknesses from Jon Goldman, but think this article "Admit weaknesses to strengthen trust" by George Dvorsky in Commune: Internet Marketing Optimization, expresses the principal best.

As you can relate, prospects are naturally defensive because they know you’re trying to sell something. To persuade them, you need to gain trust. And you can’t do that with over-the-top rhetoric.

Psychologists know that trust is integral to influence. Honesty—or the perception of honesty—goes a long way to building this trust. Studies show that being and acting trustworthy—such as by showing vulnerability and admitting a weakness—is essential for marketing.

With your guidance and support, I'm sure I will solve the lead conversion problem outlined yesterday -- and when I do, I may graduate to become a full-fledged construction marketing guru. After all, if we can find the way to convert a continuous supply of "free" leads to profitable sales, we have the base for truly profitable businesses.

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My two biggest marketing weaknesses

I'm happy this blog has top ranking for relevant "construction marketing" Google keywords. Despite this accomplishment, things aren't perfect around here, with two rather large and as yet unresolved marketing quandaries.

Maybe you have some of the same problems in your own business and possibly you have faced -- and solved -- these issues.

Disconnect between the leads/initial inquiries I am receiving and my actual service

This blog continues to generate between one and five inbound inquiries/leads a day -- with requests for the "Art and Science of Publicity", sign-ups for the free e-letter, or calls or emails seeking marketing insights.

But virtually none of the leads are currently converting to viable orders for this business's current service -- feature reports in either our regional publications or the Design and Construction Report.

It seems either I've failed to build enough trust in the service, or failed to connect enough dots to cause the initial inquirers to say "let's do it."

To draw a parallel in your situation, say your inexpensive (or even free) advertising is generating this number of leads a day an virtually none are converting. What would you do?

It seems you could either stop the advertising an find a more relevant media, review/change your selling process to see if you are "turning off" relevant clients along the way of lead conversion, or change/adapt your service offering to the leads you are actually generating.

Here, my problem is that our service is geared primarily for larger contractors (with sales volume of $2 million or more) and while we receive some inquiries at this level, most are not senior enough to say "go for it". The service is too expensive for very small contractors (under $250,000 total sales a year), and for the ones in the middle, we have a quandary -- it can be worth every cent of its sticker price, but it isn't free: You would need to budget about $1,500 as a one-time investment.

Probably the problem here is that at this level, the work requires a lot of selling skills, but my sales representatives, naturally, focus their energies on reaching out to the larger contractors who (a) don't need to pay and (b) can generate much larger total business volumes for their effort. In other words, leads which might qualify for the paid service are simply lost because they need some encouragement from a good representative, but our representatives rationally are focusing their energies where they can achieve greater return for their time and effort.

The challenge in sustaining interest and opportunities in longer-range projects.

I'm good here sometimes, but not always. This blog is a success story in that I've been able to post daily for more than two years, something few bloggers achieve. But I find many initiatives which start with much promise seem to fizzle -- I seem to lose the spark of creativity and innovation, or my ideas just don't work so well any more.

This is partly temperamental; I'm interested in new adventures and when the process becomes repetitive it fails to motivate me so much; and it is partly practical; time and obligations constantly press and it is sometimes tempting to put some things to the back burner or turn them off. The trouble with either of these approaches is that excellent relationships and initiatives lose their spark, and the great marketing value and relationships/connections built through hard work and initiative dissipate.

I suppose the answer to this question is decide if the activity/engagement really still interests me, and if it doesn't, whether I need to pull back or find better ways to connect these values/interests to the larger goals.

Yes, I've admitted a couple of rather big weaknesses here. There are strengths, of course, to offset them. Clients who do business with us generally receive value far beyond their investment and return for more. I certainly am able to persevere and delay gratification for important relationships and longer-range goals. And, even the leads this blog are generating are not converting the way they should to sales, I'm not paying any cash for them! Maybe I simply need to know this blog's readers better (you!), and discover what you really want. The insights here may lead to an entirely new business.

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What works?

With more information overload in the last few days than I've experienced in many months, I've been trying to see through the increasing volume of questions and email inquiries to help you with some simple and easy-to-implement marketing insights.

For example, tomorrow, once I upload the images and verify my notes, I'll share some observations from the Greater Ottawa Home Builders' Association about the (to me) surprising and vital importance of signs in directing people to new home sites. Does the same principal apply for sub contractors; does it matter for commercial and non-residential construction?

Yesterday, a consultant whose earlier marketing materials promoted more effective Yellow Pages communications connected with me; does he think that the decline of the Yellow Pages is over-rated, or is it a real and fundamental trend?

What do we make of blogging, the social networking sites, and the like? On Wednesday, Rainmaking guru Ford Harding said his opinions about the value of these resources in marketing have changed since we first conversed on the topic about 18 months ago -- he now thinks they are important in the marketing process, but you really have to work at them. (Ironically, my conversation with Ford for became a key part of my first article in the SMPS Marketer, which led to many interesting relationships and opportunities.)

Then, I received copies of marketing material and questions about their effectiveness from a fellow blogger who is launching a new construction business. He asked my thoughts, and I responded that he is perhaps trying to do everything for everyone and it won't work, from a marketing perspective. Then I put my reality hat on and suggested he will find whatever business he can mostly from his existing relationships and previous clients.

At 10 a.m. today I'm having coffee with an Ottawa-based online service provider who wishes to expand his coverage/service to other markets. He wants to pick my brain.

When (if) things calm down, I will begin turning these issues into separate blog themes and delve into them more closely.

But I'll start with a few observations which you can use right away.

• Often simple and dumb is best. Good job site signs are inexpensive and can be highly effective in residential work. We should explore which signs work best, and why.

• The New Media is here and if you aren't connecting with it, you are missing perhaps the biggest marketing/business/networking revolution in recent history. (Thankfully, I got a bit of a head start in the blogging space).

• If you can do what you can to help and serve others, without worrying about immediate reward, you ultimately reap the rewards that occur from these relationships. (That is why I answer the blog inquiries as best as I can even though they don't generally connect to immediate business -- I see the payback in places I'd never expect otherwise).

Finally, one of my most important pieces of advice -- and the theme of yesterday's marketing book upload on Twitter:

• You need to work with your strengths to succeed; that is, you need to connect the combination of natural talent, passion and enjoyment of what you do. If you are forcing yourself into places you don't want to be just to make money to survive, or trying to succeed at things you aren't really good at doing (even if you enjoy the work) you will ultimately not get very far in life.

You have to have fun -- and be great at what you are doing -- to succeed.

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Dream Big (thanks to Tim Klabunde)

Tim Klabunde's most recent CofeBuz blog posting is brief, and I don't think he will mind my stretch of copyright rules to republish it in full.

I like being comfortable. It is so easy to enjoy the normal flow of life, the moment by moment interactions of daily living. Yet every once in a while my life is shaken from the inside out by a force that boils up from within me, a force that demands that I do something incredible, achieving something that is greater than myself.

It is in these moments that I truly understand what I am capable of, the realization that I am able to do so much more. I struggle to find dreams that are big enough; I look in vain for obstacles that can’t be conquered.

I find it strange that throughout my life I have worked to suppress this force through logic and rhetoric. ”I can’t do that because…” and “if that were possible someone else would be doing it.” Yet today, I can see that success isn’t found in a single accomplishment, it is one’s approach to life that makes greatness. It is something that I can do and live today. A choice to rejoice in the past, plan and dream for the future, and live life to the fullest in the present.

Your turn

Monday morning has its own way of reminding us that life happens not in individual moments of greatness, but during everyday actions. It is the culmination of your actions today and tomorrow that will turn into your greatest successes. So today what are you going to pursue that is greater than yourself?

I certainly share and believe in these thoughts. Through our lives, opportunities arise to change course, to take risks, to adventure beyond our safety zone, but we need to be ready spiritually, financially and physically. Then, at crucial points -- we generally know in our heart when they are -- we can take the risk and seemingly dive off the deep end, though we often know the risks we are taking are more in the perceived fears of others than in the practical dangers we are about to experience.

(So, at 25, I went off to observe a war in Africa, for a while riding a motorcycle around Bulawayo as Rhodesia turned to Zimbabwe. Sounds daring, and the experience certainly opened doors for my life, but I used common sense and local knowledge to stay out of trouble. And, at 34, I flew to Washington, D.C. with non-preference U.S. immigration visa applications for about 300 people, but I knew I was complying with all the rules and laws, and having some fun while helping others to achieve their dreams. Yes, the scheme delivered the goods and helped me to find my current passion and connection with the Washington-area community.)

If you are in business for yourself, or if you have discovered your passion is marketing and business development and you are reading this blog in part to grow in your own abilities, you may have found part or all of the answers related in Tim's posting.

But there are other aspects you can only find in your own heart and soul. When you let go of your fears, when you accept responsibility for your mistakes, and when you take risks and reach beyond the ordinary by combining your strengths and your solid moral codes, you'll achieve greatness, too.

Go for it.

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