Yellow Dog Consulting

Sales & Marketing Consulting for solo-preneurs.

4 Things to do When Your Event Runs Long

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stop being lateToday I left an event 45 minutes later than it was scheduled to end. And yeah, I was super annoyed. By now you probably know I’m an organized person (so organized, I married a CPA) and I like events to start and end on time. Nothing annoying me more when networking than an event that starts late and ends late. It’s disrespectful of the event attendees and makes me wonder what you’d do if I gave you my money.

Here’s the deal – sometimes your event will run long. Sometimes you may want to leave the event open ended, especially if it’s a networking event, and that’s FINE. Put a schedule around it (5:30 event starts, 6:00 remarks, 7pm raffle, end ???) and I’ll know that I’m free to leave after the raffle (or before, but I LOVE free stuff).

If you’re hosting events, here’s 4 suggestions for what to do when your event runs long:

  1. Make an announcement at the time the event was supposed to end – This is being respectful of your attendees. “Hey it’s 2:30 which is when I said this would be over, I think we’ll be about another 20 minutes, but I understand if you need to leave now.” and I would have been a happy camper.
  2. Start on Time – Sounds simple right? But so many people say “let’s just give folks a few more minutes to get here.” Guess what? We all knew when this event started. Yes parking sucks, yes traffic sucks, yes I left 10 minutes late so I could get ONE MORE THING DONE but that’s not the host’s fault. If I’m late and I walk in and the event has started I’m OK with that. I knew I was late. Start with some simple housekeeping and introductions so stragglers have a chance to come in but not interrupt too much.
  3. Cut out the fluff – We arrived at 1pm and at about 5 after the event host said that we were going to informally network for about 15 minutes, so we just talked to the people next to us, but it was a small enough group we could have just done group introductions. WHICH after the 15 minutes we did. So…yeah, there’s 20 minutes that could have been saved.
  4. End on Time. Test this stuff folks. You know how many people you’re expecting and how long activities might go. You know what you’re talking about and how long that content will go. YES you’ll have long winded people in the room, learn how to cut them off politely, trust me, the rest of the room will thank you for it.

5 Marketing Tips You Need this Week

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hey it's a sales pipeline!I’ve been talking to a lot of small business owners this week about what they need to do to have better marketing systems in place for the year. Here’s a few things I kept saying…

  1. A CRM – YES, you need a database. NO Outlook isn’t a database. I use Zoho for my CRM – I love it because it integrates easily with MailChimp and I can assign tasks and follow up for people so I don’t have to remember to follow up, Zoho will tell me to. Everyone’s talking about Insightly this week too – I don’t care what CRM you use, I care that you have one AND use it.
  2. Follow Up – why aren’t you getting new business? Because you never follow up with people. For every networking event you attend schedule a half hour the next day to do all the follow up you promised you’d do. I send the follow up notes, make the calls, add people to Zoho, and connect with them on LinkedIn. It’s not hard, it’s a little time consuming, but it totally pays off. I’ve had 4 calls this week that prove it.
  3. Newsletter – I’m not really going to preach on this because I do too often, but once a month is great. Don’t over think it, just give me a tip or two or three, make it look clean/pretty/whatever and be easy to read. Tell you what – I’ll do a newsletter review of your current newsletter for FREE – just email it to me.
  4. Networking – Oh your pipeline is empty? Yeah, mine wasn’t great either. Q4 sucked. But back up on the horse and away we go. Get out of your house and go physically network with other people. My goal this year? 1 event a week and 1 1:1 a week. My pipeline is filling up…
  5. It Takes Time – Oh you’ve been going to that networking group for 3 months and haven’t gotten business yet? Yeah, that happens. Make sure you’re tweaking your message, maybe it’s not resonating. Give away a raffle item – especially if people choose what items they want to win, then you know you’re on to something by the amount of tickets for your item. Do your follow up. Make the coffee dates, make sure you’re maximizing the opportunities within the organization. It’s really yours to lose. But yeah, it takes time.

Are You the Great and Powerful Oz?

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queen_1The other day I was talking to someone and they asked what they SHOULD be doing. The first thing I said to them was networking. I’ve gotta see your face. Newsletters and social media engagement are GREAT but if I never see your face, why would I keep engaging? You’ve got to put in the time to earn people’s trust.

We all know that people do business with people they Know, Like and Trust. If I never see you or talk to you how can I get to this point?

In 2016 one of my intentions is MORE networking – I moved to a new state in 2015 and the worlds greatest yellow dog passed away. I made a lot of excuses to NOT network, but in 2016 that’s changing.

Here’s the deal – you aren’t the Great and Powerful Oz. People don’t follow yellow brick roads to you, you haven’t earned that as a small business owner.

In 2016 it’s time to get out from behind the curtain and network!