High Performance – Star Qualities to Get You Noticed

Strategy Plan One

July 19, 2012

High Performance

Whether you are an employee in the private or public sector, or into self-employment, you need to set yourself apart from the pack.  To make a significant impact on your organization or industry, there are things you can do to achieve high performance.  Possessing and demonstrating qualities will ensure you stand out from the competition, internally and externally.

For the most part, personalities get noticed, but other characteristics and qualities gained through experience can make you shine through.  Your qualities can assist in your performance, but can also rub off also in the higher performance of employees, teams and business itself around you.

High Performance Qualities and Tips

Here are some qualities and tips to performing at a high level and getting noticed:

• Demonstrate excellence in everything you do, strive for excellence and encourage all to achieve excellence
• Set aggressive, achievable goals and demonstrate dedication by hitting them
• Seek and implement continuous improvements for yourself, for your team, for your business
• Be genuine, truthful, honest, respectful and fair; uphold strong values and ethics and treat others as you would want to be treated
• Create an open and transparent environment around you; staff, stakeholders and customers will want to go to as you have gained levels of trust
• Keep emotions in check
• Be consistent in your responses, decisions, and in your daily work
• Be an example of collaboration, partnership building, encouraging team effort
• Rely on other’s expertise; be noticed for calling upon others for their value-added advice, opinions and recommendations
• Value everyone’s input and feedback
• Lead by example
• Be energetic, enthusiastic, creative and innovative
• Be loyal to colleagues, staff, customers
• Hit and make the deadlines, be on time

More on personal and business development:

• Social Media Jobs – What Social Media Companies Are Looking For
• Productivity – 6 Small Steps For a More Productive Day
• Fathers – Great Dads, Great Mentors
• Positive Words – Business Communications in a Positive Way
• Goal Setting – Keeping You Going in the Right Direction
• Presentation Tips for Business Meetings and Interviews
• Values and Ethics – Integrating Strong Principles into your Organization

More business blogs of interest:

• Business Plan – The Next Steps

• Business Intelligence – Keeping you Wired In
• SEO Guide to Higher Conversions with a Few Steps [infographic]
• EService, Social Media and Customer Service Trends [infographic]

Strategy Plan One

http://strategyplanone.com

Business information, resources and tips for the entrepreneur

© 2012 Strategy Plan One

Presentation Tips for Business Meetings and Interviews

Strategy Plan One

May 30, 2012 

Presentation Tips

Whether you are going into a business meeting, interview for job, or to pitch an idea to an investor or financial institution, there are certain tactics that could push your presentation from mediocre to brilliant.  It’s not necessarily the gadgets, techie presentation tools you bring along to illustrate your points, but rather how you present and what you do in the presentation to convince the crowd.  Here are some tips to assist in your presentations.

Knowledge is King

Ensure you are well versed in the subject matter.  If you are pitching an idea in an industry, know that product, industry and markets inside and out.  Conducting deep research and digging into as much information prior is going to make you look like you know your stuff… and that will impress the audience

If you are going into an interview, know the information around the position, company, and industry.  Chances are you will be slammed with knowledge questions in the interview and your presentation of answers should demonstrate your deep knowledge in the subject matter.

Presentation Tip – Be Clear and Concise

Oral presentation can be stressful, and that stress can cause some to ramble on with too much speech, or technical babble that would throw off the audience.  Going into a meeting well prepared through practicing your presentation, ensure you get your message right down to the exact clear points to the audience.  Speak with clarity on the topic, illustrating the benefits you want and need to present, that would be relevant to the audience.  Keep the non-relevant stuff off the discussion.  As you remember who your audience is, keep the technical or operational specialist information to a minimum if the audience isn’t at that technical level.  If technical questions are asked, then it opens the door for that detailed discussion.

Presentation Tip – Confidence

You will need to exude a high level of confidence in front of the Boards, partners, or employers.  Confidence is high when you know your stuff, have a great track record, know that your personality is right fit.  With high confidence you should not be sheepish in promoting yourself, your strengths and your great ideas.  External interested parties gravitate to persons with a high level of confidence as that will transfer over to other aspects of business life.  Once parties are confident in you, they will be confident in your ability to lead projects, lead organizations, achieve goals and company objectives.

Be Strong, Composed and Limit Emotions

Interviews and business meetings are pressured, stressful situations.  These parties may use interviews or business presentations as a tools to see how well you react under pressure.  Business presentations and interviews can be full of questioning that is trying to draw out behavioral responses from you.  It is best to stay strong and composed to adequately answer questioning.  In staying composed in the stressful situations, you are limiting those emotions that may alter or hinder your ability to make decisions or achieve a goal under pressure.  Parties will take positive notes on your ability to handle high pressured situations with ease.

Ability to Adapt

As you move forward in your discussions and presentations, gauge your audience. How well is it going?  Don’t be afraid to stop at points and ask the questions, “Was that point clear?” or “Is further discussion or detail required on that point?”.  As an astute presenter and speaker you may need to revise your speech, your presentation methods on the fly to get a differing response or to motivate the crowd in another way.  If you are getting negative responses in one area or topic, switch gears to adapt to discuss the constructive positive points or benefits, or have the ability to discuss the alternate pathways to mitigate those negative points.

Preparedness with Contingencies

Along with having a solid knowledge base and that strong confidence level, you will need to show how well prepared you are for situations, and how well you plan.  For interviews or business presentations, you need to undertake a high level of preparation in advance.  Thinking along the lines of business scenarios that may arise.  Not only must you prepare for the known circumstances, but you must be a pro-active planner around the unknowns or the what-ifs.  Demonstrating that you solidly analyze scenarios and develop action plans and contingencies will win you big bonus points.

Articles and blogs you may be interested in:

• Communication Strategies, Policies and Processes to Control Messages
• The Right Body Language and Attitude Integral to Success
• Strategies for Handling Difficult Conversations
• Young Entrepreneurs – Strategies and Tips to Keep You Focused
• Strategies to Improve Performance in your Personal Life and Business

Communication and presentation information:

• Presentation Hints and Tips
• Helpful tips for Oral Presentations
• Presentation Tips from SlideShare

Strategy Plan One

http://strategyplanone.com

Business information, resources and tips for the entrepreneur

© 2012 Strategy Plan One

Use of Social Media for Marketing, and Other Marketing Activities

Strategy Plan One

May 4, 2012 

Use of Social Media for Marketing

Gone is the traditional method of advertising in the newspaper and radio and in with current social media marketing and advertising platforms.  Or are those methods gone?

For sure social media is in and it continues to grow exponentially.  Just when you thought user bases were leveling out, a new interest in a platform keeps the level of growth consistent.  It seems every week a new wave of more interesting social media platforms emerge.  However, business owners must not forget the other forms of marketing that would add value to the marketing mix.

Social media marketing involves the promotion and attention of your business, and engagement between users of social media platforms and your business’ products and services.  The use of social media for marketing would be the purpose of gaining traffic and attention to your business.

Whether through short bursts of information using Twitter or detailed Facebook or LinkedIn pages, the absolute benefit to businesses using social media, is that information can be shared quickly across massive audiences.  It has been a business to consumer and business to business trend over the past era, but not known if this marketing trend will be long-lasting.  If it will be long-lasting, social media marketing may evolve as fast as the whole social media industry itself is evolving.

Marketing Activities – Considerations other than Social Media

Marketing plans could be chalked full of a mix of marketing activities, new and traditional forms.  An entrepreneur should dig into developing activities that would be applicable to promoting and getting out the appropriate message on their own product and service mix.  Yes, social media may work to a certain extent, but may not be the best avenue for local, personal marketing for example.  Entrepreneurs may have to consider forms of advertising and that promote products and service in person, such as trade shows, and promotional events.  Differing from social media marketing, trade show events give you the ability to showcase products and services to masses of potential customers, with colourful, interactive displays manned by representatives (actual people) promoting the business.

Marketing Plans

When developing detailed business and marketing plans, consider the mix the marketing activities based on your intended audience, and what type of method you will use to effectively engage with your audience and raise attention.  You may find social media works well in junction with other forms of marketing activities.  Carefully weigh your options for marketing activities and measure results from activities.  Best results may occur when revising your marketing activities mix.

Strategy Plan One

http://strategyplanone.com

Business information, resources and tips for the entrepreneur

© 2012 Strategy Plan One

Color and Design – Factors Influencing Commerce [Infographic]

Strategy Plan One

April 14, 2012 

Color and Design

Many factors influence how, when, where and what we buy in the marketplace.  Marketing plays a key role in tapping into these cues, and utilizing them out front to build a more richer, more powerful message to the consumer.  Making the powerful message resonate with the consumer more will result in a deeper connection, relationship and eventually sales and revenue.

This infographic from KissMetrics digs deep and illustrates color and design, and other factors that influence our purchase decision-making process.

Color and Design Facts

Interesting facts to note from this infographic on color and design influences:

• 93% of consumers place visual appearance as the primary factor in purchasing
• 85% state color as the primary visual factor
• Color influences brand recognition by 80% (confidence factor)
• Online shopping – 42% based an opinion of a website on its overall design
• Webpage load time factor / correlation:  longer load times result in decreased sales
• Different colors have different effects/purposes: Blue – security/business, Red – Sales, Yellow – optimistic/youth

When developing your marketing plan and marketing activities, use the appropriate color and design for maximum impact and benefits.  You may have to complete some market testing with color and design in your products and services.

Strategy Plan One

http://strategyplanone.com

Business information, resources and tips for the entrepreneur

The Right Body Language and Attitude Integral to Success

Strategy Plan One

April 6, 2012 

Reading Body Language

As an entrepreneur, business owner or professional, body language and attitude become critically important in face-to-face meetings.  It can be the difference between success and failure.  In reading body language, physical cues and tones in speech can signal a leader, partner or customer a certain way and trigger a response accordingly.

It is best to create and to exude a positive image and body language, which will in most case, trigger more positive responses than negative ones.  On the flip side, you can imagine what type of response you will get from a partner or customer reading body language that is unfriendly, appears uninterested, full of inappropriate gestures, and is all around negative.

Body language will tell people, for example, if you are interested, alert, attentive, happy, relaxed, angry, aggressive or bored.  Body language is one of the non-verbal signals that you will give off to create or not create a great impression.  Body language from some reports accounts for ~ 90% of all  communications between parties, and hence the importance when reading body language of individuals.

Reading Body Language – Body Language Signs

First impressions are everything.  A leader, investor or partner will observe your initial behaviours, immediately reading body language you exude.

It may not matter who you are, but how you behave in a professional manner in an initial meeting.  A leader or investor may be looking to meet with you to determine what type of person you are, how professional you are, and how you fit in to meet common objectives and goals.

Carefully observe and be cognizant of how you are in a meeting.  Closed body stances such as cross arms or postures pointing away from clients are problematic and show behavior hinging on  avoidance, non-acceptance and non-openness.  Appropriate upright body stances towards the participant help in saying you are interested in the person, topic, goal, and that you are genuine and there to assist or join in.  If you are slouched over, leaning to one side or using the advantages of ergonomic chairs to lean way back, chances are you are giving the wrong signal in that you are not interested, you are not serious, or that you are not listening and engaged in conversation.

Reading Body Language – Eye Contact

Eye contact with the in-house audience is critically important in making a connection with the people there.  Good eye contact will inform the audience, leaders, and partners that you are genuinely interested.  Great eye contact strengthens the communication and connection between two people, and creates a richer communication experience.  If you don’t maintain frequent eye contact, parties may be receiving a signal that you are not interested.  It is also distracting when speakers or listeners’ eyes and body wander all over the place.

Reading Body Language – Hand Gestures

Watch and ensure appropriate hand gestures are made by you.  Hand waving and arm flaying motions may set a negative cues, whereas slight hand movements emphasizing points may be appropriate.  Another blog could be written on appropriate hand and body gestures applicable to in business environments where the culture is different that North America.  Be sure you seek advice about conduct in face-to-face meetings in other countries.   Selfgrowth.com has some additional great tips on body language.

Reading Body Language – Attitude

Go in with a positive attitude, even though is some circumstances you may not agree or want to be there.   As mentioned staying positive will rub off on others and you will most likely receive a positive response.  In some cases, you may even experience a constructive, negative response which may be as good as a positive response.  Coming in with a negative attitude will spell immediate failure in negotiations, handling difficult challenges, or in building relationships.

In some cases, you need to be a good actor, for the good of the company and your fellow colleagues.  You may need to exude the positive, as your actions may impact many others in the organization…remember that.

Reading Body Language – Tips for Body Language, Attitude and Presence 

• Be prepared and be professional for first impressions
• Look and act interested
• Engage in conversation
• Be polite, be courteous
• Showcase your best and what you have to offer as a person and professional
• Dress appropriately for the occasion
• Facial expressions – anything neutral to slight smiles signals the positive
• Keep an upright stature, whether sitting or standing
• Do not slouch, lean, rock, swing in chairs
• Provide slight body and hand gestures; aggressive motions – negative
• Use slight gestures to emphasis points
• Watch you tone in speech and watch language
• Ensure you use the right body signals, language for the right cultural environment

In the global, highly competitive world, you as an aggressive entrepreneur need to make positive immediate impacts with customers, partners and other successful business owners.   Similar to business planning processes, plan in your head how you will act and behave in face-to-face meeting to successfully negotiate and win over people.

Strategy Plan One

http://strategyplanone.com

Business information, resources and tips for the entrepreneur

© 2012 Strategy Plan One