Chris Matheus | FOCM Networking

First impressions are very important

Saw this on TheMuse.com written by Lisa B. Marshall and it reminded me of how important first impressions are. She sets up the situation that we’ve all been in – introducing yourself at a meeting:

Like you, I attend my fair share of meetings. As a consultant, I’m often meeting with people I’ve only laid eyes on for the first time just moments before and, almost always, I’m asked to introduce myself to them.

“Lisa, tell us a little bit about yourself.”

Ugh. Why is this little question so hard to answer? Perhaps because we are complicated and we’re being asked—usually on the spot—to make ourselves sound simple. Or maybe because there’s an element about it that always makes me feel like I’m supposed to be selling myself.

She gives 3 tips for making a good impression:

Communicate your contribution (tell why you are there)
Set yourself apart, be memorable
Communicate culturally (be aware of where you and with whom you’re meeting)

You can read the entire article at the link below:

How to introduce yourself

Traits of successful salespeople

Saw this on LinkedIn and thought it interesting.

Written by Steve W. Martin in Harvard Business Review

If you ask an extremely successful salesperson, “What makes you different from the average sales rep?” you will most likely get a less-than-accurate answer, if any answer at all. Frankly, the person may not even know the real answer because most successful salespeople are simply doing what comes naturally.

Over the past decade, I have had the privilege of interviewing thousands of top business-to-business salespeople who sell for some of the world’s leading companies. I’ve also administered personality tests to 1,000 of them. My goal was to measure their five main personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and negative emotionality) to better understand the characteristics that separate them their peers.

The main key personality attributes of top salespeople are:

Modesty
Conscientious
Achievement
Curiosity
Lack of gregariousness (a surprise finding)
Lack of Discouragement
Not embarrassable

Read the full article here:

Seven traits of successful sales people

Positive Trait Can Hold You Back

Well, this sure has rung true for me in my career. I have seen others get promoted when I was doing as well or better than they were. What I noticed was those who got promoted engaged in self-promotion. Not a bad thing at all, just that to get what you want you need to tell those above you what you want to do. If you want to get promoted, you need to talk to your boss about it and ask what things you need to do in order for your boss to recommend you for promotion. Being humble is admirable, but it can hold you back.

An excerpt from the article on this is below the link to the article.

Positive trait that can hold you back

In a perfect world, your completed assignments would speak for themselves. You’d work on friendly, collaborative teams with fair-minded co-workers, and each person would be free with praise and full of self-effacing humility. You’d never have to worry about self-promotion or navigating office politics to get your due.

But the reality is that you need to speak up. Generosity and a humble nature are great attributes to have, of course. They help you keep a team-first attitude, improve your leadership abilities, and generally endear people to you as a professional.

Example of Irony

It was reported that in the early days of Trump’s run to be the Republican nominee that it was a publicity stunt to increase the Trump brand. The thought was that he could get free publicity to help increase demand and interest in a new season of The Apprentice/Celebrity Apprentice, even if he stayed in only for a month or two. Now that he’s gone further than he expected and is in fact the Republican nominee, it appears that the publicity is hurting his business. Since Trump has brought out such strong negative feelings from a significant percent of the population, it’s hurting his brand. This will give his kids the opportunity to manage/promote in a crisis. It appears that people don’t want to be associated with it. For example:

…meeting planners and industry insiders say, the name — and the property’s association with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump — is likely to be the largest sticking point for the 263-room hotel, which opened to the public Monday.

“This hotel is the new shiny penny in Washington — the only problem is that Donald Trump has his name on it,” said Chryssa Zizos, president and chief executive of Live Wire Media Relations, whose clients include the Carlyle Group and Raytheon. “People are really, really nervous about utilizing the hotel’s bigger spaces because it’s so polarizing. There’s a lot of stigma attached to it.”

Trump name bad for his business?

July 14 FOCM Networking Event

On July 14, while in the Raleigh-Durham area, I booked a boat through the timeshare boat club I belong to (Freedom Boat Club, (Freedom Boat Club) for Jordan Lake and took a few FOCM members out for after work boating. Present were: Vince Hoefling, Michelle Jacobson, Gayle Grandinetti, Mike Burrows, Nick Macaulay, Carrie Gallagher, Wendy Revenaugh and Kelly O’Brien. And a few of us went out to Tyler’s Taproom in Apex for additional refreshments.

More on Search Engine Bias

I guess at this point I shouldn’t be surprised that the major search engines use different algorithms/formulas to “guess” at what you’re searching for. I had assumed it was based on popularity, what others were searching for. I also assumed that if that were true then people would search for the same things on the major search engines. It appears that there are may be censoring or hiding of obviously likely search phrases.

So on Monday September 12, I went to Google, Yahoo and Bing and typed in “hillary clinton basket of”. The results were surprising or maybe not:

Google had nothing, guessed absolutely nothing to complete the phrase
Bing suggested “Hillary Clinton Bucket of Chicken”
Yahoo suggested “Hillary Clinton Basket of Deplorables”

See screen shots below:

July 15 Networking Event

As many of you know, one of the founding principles of FOCM Networking is “patience”. Patience is required in several forms – patience to earn/receive your FOCM membership card and patience to wait for events to be posted to the international world wide web public record. This posting is one such example. On July 15, 2015 in one of the most emotional ceremonies ever – Brian Horan received his FOCM Membership card. As I recall (and since it’s been so long, none of those in attendance can really remember how it actually happened), there was nary a dry eye to be seen. Join me in welcoming Brian Horan.

Present at that evening’s event which occurred at Serena’s on Miami Blvd in Durham, NC were (front row then back row and left to right): Michelle Pasiecznik, Brad Johnson, Pippa Wilson, Lauren Jones, Christina Alexander Smith, Brian Horan, Nick Macaulay, Rosina Pavia, Renee Brown, Jennifer Ausland, Sharon Braddy, Bernie Linner, a photo bomber and Lisa Monette.

FOCM Networking Group outside at Serena's — FOCM Networking Group outside at Serena’s

NCAA Punishes North Carolina

So the NCAA decides to schedule 7 college sports playoffs or championship events outside of North Carolina because North Carolina’s legislature passed a bill they don’t agree with. Really? Yes, really. Why the hell is the NCAA getting involved in political BS? It irritated me enough to write the letter below and send it to them.

NCAA Headquarters
700 W. Washington St.
PO Box 6222
Indianapolis, IN 46206-6222

Dear NCAA Headquarters:

This letter is to recommend that you stick to your dedication to the well-being and lifelong success of college athletes and stay out of political side shows. Rescheduling college playoff and championship events outside of North Carolina is ridiculous.

Two of your seven beliefs – “an inclusive culture” and “respect” for philosophical differences seems to be forgotten in your decision. You should respect the autonomy and philosophical difference that the state of North Carolina legislature has taken.

North Carolina residents don’t deserve this treatment from you and you certainly have no role in meting out punishment to those with whom you disagree as though you’re an arbiter of social conscience. I didn’t see that in your seven core beliefs.

Sincerely,

NCAA Core Values

Another birthday

September 3 would have been Peter Holthe’s 57th birthday. On that day I thought of him and know he would be enjoying the evolution of FOCM. I miss being able to talk with him. I know he would have had some great ideas and great stories to contribute to this website.

Happy birthday Peter!

You can read more about how Peter influenced this website and the forming of FOCM in the link below or click on the “about” button in the tabs.

About

Google Search is Biased

By now I have seen enough proof of the political bias of Google Search. It’s easily proven. Go to yahoo search and type “hillary clinton cri” and see how it suggests what you’re looking for based on the most common searches like that. You get “crimes”, “criminal”, “criminal charges” and “crimes list” as the most common. Do the same in Google Search and you get “cries” and “crisis of character”. See below example based on recent Colin Kaepernick quotes. I’ve started using other search engines as a result.

“You have Hillary who has called black teens or black kids ‘super predators,’ you have Donald Trump who’s openly racist,” Kaepernick told reporters. “We have a presidential candidate who has deleted emails and done things illegally and is a presidential candidate. That doesn’t make sense to me because if that was any other person you’d be in prison. So, what is this country really standing for?”

So Kaepernick believes Hillary Clinton has used racially insulting terms and belongs in prison.

NewsBusters conducted a Google News search using the terms “Kaepernick, Trump and openly racist” a day later and got 48 results. Yet a search using the terms “Kaepernick, Clinton and prison” returned just four. The only item on the Clinton remarks to appear in a major press outlet was an article in The Washington Post, according to NewsBusters.

The Associated Press ran a story noting Kaepernick’s description of Trump, but left out his remarks about Clinton.

Web Search Engines

Search

Author: Chris Matheus