Warming up cold calling

At some time in our working or private lives, we might need to ring a stranger and offer them something, or ask for their help.

I spoke the other day to someone who is very experienced at this. He had some extremely useful suggestions:

1. This is nobody’s favourite task.
2. Send some info first: it gives you a reason for your call
3. Before you send it, ring up and ask for the correct name to send it to, and how to spell it. The person you ask will also then tell you how to pronounce it, which often helps.
4. Ask for an e-mail address too and if they mind receiving it by e-mail as well.
5. Give your letter three days, then follow up with a phone call. Did they receive the letter? If not – would they mind if you sent another?
6. You catch someone’s attention in the first 10 words. That’s it.
   So make sure they are good ones.
7. Be nice, be polite, don’t be smarmy.
8. Have what you want to say very clearly in your mind, and if you must, write down the main points – an aide memoire only, though.
9. Do not use a script – your words will sound lifeless and uninspiring.
10. Never let them call you back. They won’t. Ask when it would be convenient to call again.
11. Form a relationship. Be normal, don’t rush. Once you have their attention, show interest in the person at the other end, and respect their time.
12. Let them see you as a person, not a waste of time.
13. Don’t talk too much, and let them get a word in edgeways.
14. LISTEN, then respond.
15. And remember, you can’t and won’t, win ‘em all. Don’t flog a dead horse – some people will not be interested, and you should respect this. You rang them, and they don’t have to speak to you
    if they don’t want to.
16. Never ever be rude.
17. You should keep at this for no more than an hour at a time. Get up, walk around, have a cup of tea, some fresh air… Then come back and pick up the phone again.

All this struck me as eminently sensible, and demystifies something that frightens the pants off most of us, I think.

The Good Blog Guide

I received this the other day from Richard Morton who can be contacted on Richard Morton info@qm-consulting.co.uk. His words of advice are too good to be ignored, so here they are, slightly edited to include my own prejudices!

Although there are many reasons for blogging, a good blog is simply one that generates interest and comments. There isn’t any one particularly good writing style for a blog, but there are probably plenty of bad ones.

• Be yourself

Others expect you to write in a way that reflects your personality, so you don’t have to follow a particular style or mould. If you want to make all your entries rhyme for example, or avoid all forms of punctuation, then go ahead.

• Post Headings

Make the title interesting and engaging: “50 Ways to Love your Liver” might be more effective than “Suggested Limits for Alcohol Consumption”.

• Content Guidelines

It is a good idea to break up large chunks of text into paragraphs to make them more readable. People almost always skim read items on the web, so the more engaging the first few words of a paragraph are, the better.

• Avoid jargon or acronyms unless you know your target audience are comfortable with them.

• Avoid overusing capital letters. OCCASIONAL use is OK for emphasis but too much is considered a written form of shouting.

• Avoid clichés like the plague – please no “brain dumps”, “blue sky thinking”, “cutting edges”, “first movers”, “leveraging of the proposition”, and even “low hanging fruit” (don’t ask!)

• Check posts before sending – typing, spelling and grammatical errors look unprofessional. But on the other hand, don’t be afraid to break the rules occasionally; all the best writers do. Just make sure it is oveeusly intenshunall.

• Choosing a Subject

A few ideas for helping decide on an interesting subject to post about:

• Brainstorm – come up with as many ideas as you can, no matter how wild and wacky. Then filter out the obviously bad ones.

• The best advice you have ever been given – whether related to business or personal life; you often see a question like this in interviews.

• Ask a question that people will be dying to respond to. If you are desperate offer a prize.

• Compliment someone or an organisation; it goes against the negative trends in the world so it can attract attention.

• News related e.g. “101 Things that David Cameron could do now there isn’t an election looming”

• Random thoughts – e.g. “What was the best thing before Sliced Bread”

Things to Avoid
As with any other form of written publication blogging is subject to the law and particular things to watch out for are:

• Slanging matches – don’t respond to inflammatory comments; if possible get them removed.

• Defamation – if you write anything about anyone or any organisation, then you need to be sure that it is true and could be proved in court if necessary.

• Copyright – all published material is copyright so unless you have permission from the copyright owner to use it, don’t. This applies equally to text and images, for example just because you find an image that you like on Google doesn’t mean that you can reproduce it anywhere.

• Offence – it goes without saying that anything offensive shouldn’t be included, and offensive comments should be removed. Some things are obvious and some aren’t, bear in mind that it is difficult to make a joke without potentially offending someone.

• Personal Details – don’t publish other people’s personal details without their permission, and use common sense when publishing your own.

Effective e-mails – communication that works

We all communicate by e-mail, and we usually love the speed and the convenience. But sometimes our messages come back to bite us.

Here is some advice to keep you from losing friends and alienating people…

1. Don’t shout or whisper. Use upper and lower case. If you use all capitals, the note you think is just emphatic will appear rude and hectoring. If you use lower case, you will seem unprofessional and not taking your message seriously – so why should anyone else.
2. Don’t clog up the in-boxes of other people who may have less space or a slower computer than you. Tell people in advance that you want to send them large attachments, and ask them if they would like them. If you freeze their computer, they will be furious, with good reason.
3. Don’t waste people’s time. Be specific in the subject line – people want to know why they should bother to open the e-mail.
4. I use the subject line for short messages and often leave the main body blank – for instance: Susan got the job! is often all that is needed. But do this only with people you know well. I am not convinced that e-mails need to have “Dear so and so” at the top and only put this to people I know mind, or to people who might. They are not letters, and sent for speed and ease of delivery. Other people disagree, however.
5. Be brief – see point 4.
6. Say what you need. Ask for an answer if you would like one. And if you need it by a particular time, say so.
7. But not too brief. You can risk being thought of as rude and aggressive, so err on the side of politeness. A pleasant sign off does no harm, and leave a good taste in the mouth.
8. Don’t be too chummy. It can just be irritating and instead of ingratiating yourself as a good chap, you will just seem over-keen to be their bessie friend. If you are writing a business e-mail, that’s the time to do it as if you are sending it on headed letterpaper.
9. If you wouldn’t say it on the phone, do not send it by e-mail. Something typed looks crosser, stronger, more important, more serious than you probably mean it to be. Don’t use e-mails to air a grievance or tell someone off. Do it face to face. For one thing, it’s cowardly. For another, they can always send you one back, and you will like it as little as they liked yours.
10. If you are hopping mad, give yourself time to cool down. Write out whatever you want to say, and put it in the draft folder for a day or so. Then, if you still want to send it (are you sure?) take out the adjectives. You will still make your point.
11. Even though it’s in cyberspace, your message still needs to be written properly. Check spelling, grammar, punctuation – every time.
12. Put in headings and bulletpoints, and your readers will thank you for it – anything that highlights the main points at first glance will be welcome, especially if there are several, and it is a long e-mail.

And finally:

Read every e-mail twice more before you send it. Would you like to receive it?

Favourite things…

It’s a Sunday, and I thought about something other than work today. About what people like, and what whets people’s appetites.

And I came up with a short list of five simple things that make me smile – not faint with happiness, but smile and feel pleased. (Additions welcomed – I’ll be doing my own, too).

• The smell and feel of freshly-laundered linen and cotton – shirts, sheets, tablecloths (as if!), napkins…
• A letter – in a handwritten envelope
• A really good cup of coffee
• Being met at the airport – and better still, being surprised
• Taking a London taxi and actually saving time, instead of being stuck in traffic and ending up wishing I had taken the bus

That will do for starters, and the best thing about this list is that each one is achievable, and doesn’t cost a fortune (unless you take a cab from Finchley to Wimbledon, which isn’t the point).

But the point is that nothing on this is controversial or rocket science, and I doubt there is anything on it that anyone would violently disagree with. So there is a common ground – unless you are off caffeine, that is, in which case perhaps a really good nettle tea might do the trick?

The first post

Should my first post of my first blog be startling? I expect so, but I have decided to ease myself in gently, and poke my head around the door before opening it and rushing headlong into cyberspace.

Lots of ideas. Lots of thoughts, and questions and all that. But taking it slowly.

This is going to be about words. And about how to use them properly.

I write articles, and I also communicate with the press, in thought and word and deed. PR, in effect.

Prompted by leaving the country and the media for 12 years, which I spent in Africa (Sierra Leone, before the troubles, Kenya, ditto, and Cameroon, and then on to Brussels for a couple of years) before returning to England, older, wiser and less inclined to commute.

So – an office at the bottom of my garden. Comfortable, some mod cons like broadband and my beloved Apple Mac, and room for painting too. I write articles, I bash away slightly desperately at fiction, knowing that I will allow myself to be distracted by a falling leaf unless I am careful. And I do PR too, with a colleague, who knows her stuff and whom I like.

Between us we have set up a small but – we like to think – perfectly formed agency which does our few clients proud. Few not because nobody wants us, but because we want to keep it that way.

My first subject then is how I have noticed that people have very little idea what PR is. There seems to be a general feeling that it involves smiling young girls with little experience who ring up a lot when they are not wanted, lots of expense account lunches, a slightly disapproving sense of ‘anyone can do it so why spend money?’, and a distrust of the undoubted fact that it is very hard to quantify.

This is indeed how PR is done – badly.

Anyone who has had – or done – good PR has a different take on the matter.

I would say that, wouldn’t I? Well, I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t enjoy it, and believe me I wouldn’t enjoy doing it badly.

So for the next few blogs, I am going to discuss how good PR is done.

Shirley Conran, when she had become well known as Superwoman, years and years ago, was quizzed on a radio show by a disgruntled listener.

Surely anyone could write a book like hers? What on earth was so special about it, and by association, about her?

“Well,” she answered, politely. “I agree. Anyone could write a book like mine, as long as they were prepared to put in a lot of effort doing the research, and work hard on finding a good agent and publisher, and promoting it all over the country when it has just come out, and have the discipline to keep writing till they have finished, and usually at 6 in the morning every morning.”

Anyone could probably do PR, if they were prepared and able to attract clients who trust them to do a good job, to devise an imaginative and effective strategy, and to work hard for people who hope for coverage, quickly and thus lots more clients.