I recently watched a podcast where Jimmy Carr said, “Small talk brings people together, and big talk separates them.”
 
How true is that!
 
In this message, I reinforce the uses of small talk in a business context and then share three tips to improve your skills in this area.
 
Can you learn to be good at small talk?
 
You sure can. I was a programmer who couldn’t look people in the eye, and now I can talk to anybody.
 
Dig into the video, and then please leave a comment with your thoughts after you’ve watched it.

You go to a restaurant, and at the end of the meal, they come round with the bill and a heap of mint chocolates and ask you how many you’d like.
 
Or, before a visit to a Spa hotel, they ask you about your preference for the size of the dressing gowns, and when you arrive, that’s the size they give you.
 
Or, on the anniversary of doing business with a client, you get a thank you card in the post or a personalised thank you video via email.
 
All of these are Sili features, Small Items with a Large Impact.
 
Build them into your service, and they will differentiate you, make people believe you get the big things right and increase referrals.

At our growth summits, we discuss the differences between a Scale-4-Sale business and a Profit, Lifestyle, and Wealth business.

On one slide there is a line that sums up what success means in each case.

For the scale up business, success means “more”, but for the PLW business success means “enough”.

In this edition of FTDOMA I explore this concept and then discuss the implications for you, as a business owner.

Don’t forget, a business provides 4 things for its owners we want to make sure it does!

When it comes to building relationships, speaking on the phone comes after an in-person meeting and a video call.
 
It’s really hard to build a relationship thru the written word like emails, LinkedIn DMs and WhatsApp’s.
 
But how often do you struggle to get people on the phone when you need them.
 
Another problem further down the relationship trail is getting your clients to look at things and then act on them.
 
The solution is simple and devastatingly effective.
 
In this video, I’ll explain two things you can do to be more effective at reaching the people you need quickly.

Sales calls can be difficult and we often find ourselves “doing this one thing first” followed by another before we make that next call.
 
In this edition of FTDOMA, I share one tip that has worked well for me over the years.
 
It relates to three pieces of information you need to keep about your targets.
 
Do that, and suddenly, the sales calls will become easier. There will be less need to procrastinate, and more calls will be made.
 
In addition, your calls are likely to be more successful!
 
I also include at the end the targets I use when making sales calls that might also help you.

A brand is like a shortcut. People see part of yours, and an internal box is ticked (or it isn’t).
 
That’s why the corporates spend millions of pounds building their brands.
 
See the golden arches or an apple with a bite out of it and feel it’s okay to get your credit card out. Right?
 
It might be for big corporations, but it's different for solopreneurs or small rec firms.
 
In this edition of FTDOMA, I unpick company and personal branding to make knowing what you must do easy.
 
The good news is that most of your brand is not down to image and messaging. There is something far more important.

I have seen LinkedIn headlines that are like fishing trips – a big net to catch a wide group of prospects.
 
Except it achieves the opposite trying to be everything to everybody ends up being nothing to anybody.
 
The answer is to focus on what you do best and use that to win a client, then cross-sell whatever else you offer.
 
In this edition of FTDOMA, I explore the whys, hows, and whats of this very important topic.
 
As the title suggests, the more you focus, the more you win.
 
Put another way: concentrate to penetrate and penetrate to accumulate!
 

In its simplest form, a workshop is where you learn how to do something from somebody who knows how.

As a BD tool, they are massively powerful yet woefully under-used.

Online versions revolutionised how we run them. Before that, you had to hire a room and get people to attend it.

 You may think this is harder than it actually is. In this edition of FTDOMA, I explain all: -

• How to choose a subject.
• Who should run the workshop.
• What part do you play in it all.
• How to run them.
• How to get the right people there.

 I dare you to give it a go and see what happens. 

 It’s a plan with no drawbacks and can deliver some great results for you.

Let’s start by looking at the pros and cons of running a LinkedIn Newsletter: - 

• They are free.
• They always reach the inbox.
• LinkedIn invites people to subscribe.
• If you primarily produce content, you can send out a promotional post every now and then.
• It’s easy to invite people to subscribe yourself.
• It builds up a selection of really good quality content you can point people towards when you connect.
• You can use it as a feed into your email newsletter.
• You can’t see who is reading it or clicking on links.
• LinkedIn owns your newsletter – they may withdraw it at any time 

However, LinkedIn newsletters also have a very neat feature that you may find even more useful.

You can have more than one!

In this edition of FTDOMA I show you how to create a second (or first if you don’t have one) LinkedIn newsletter.

The traditional approach to pricing is: -

 Contingent – lowest price

• Exclusive – more expensive than contingent
• Retained – more expensive than exclusive

Now, a full retained search requires a lot of activity for which you will want to be paid.

But exclusive carries much the same effort as contingent, maybe a little more.

However, on average, only 1 in 5 contingent deals end in fees, but the figure is closer to 4 out of 5 for exclusive.

In other words, your hourly rate (number of hours you work on all vacancies divided into fees earned) is considerably greater for contingent.

This means that you can lower the fees for contingent deals, making it even more attractive to buyers.

In this edition of FTDOMA, I follow the argument to its conclusion.