Happy
New Year!
Welcome
to another issue of Communication Matters! In every issue, we will review
topics that will help you grow your business faster with cutting-edge
communication skills.
************
We send this publication only to those who have requested it. We do
not sell, rent or give out our mailing lists. If you find this newsletter
to be of value, we invite and encourage you to forward it to your friends.
************
In this
issue:
Business
Blogging
Negotiation
Skills for Success
Creativity
Corner: Forced Relationships
Business
Blogging
According
to Merriam-Webster online, Blog is the 2004 Word of the year. Are you
familiar with it?
A Weblog
or blog is an instant publishing tool to add fresh content to a web
page. Although Weblogs (blogs) are currently used by only a small number
of online consumers, they've garnered a great deal of corporate attention
because their readers and writers are highly influential and often technology-oriented.
Forrester
Research, Inc. believes that blogging will grow in importance, and at
a minimum, companies should monitor blogs to learn what is being said
about their products and services. Companies that plan to create their
own public blogs should already feel comfortable having a conversation
with their customers. To search for blogs to read on a particular topic,
go to BlogPulse,
Technorati or
Feedstar.
To read
a blog, you need an RSS newsreader.(RSS means "Really Simple Syndication".)
This new method for communicating with your customer doesn't use email
to deliver your message. Instead a newsreader can bring your customer
information from many sites on any particular subject to their desktop.
Some RSS Newsreader sites are:
NewsGator
,Bloglines, Feedreader
(free!) or NetNewsWire
(for Mac)
The excitement
about this new method for communication is:
- RSS
circumvents filters and email overload.
- You
can get information at your finger tips on specific topics without
having to visit a list of web sites.
- Google
and other search engines rewards sites that are updated often, that
link to other sites and most importantly, that has many inbound
links. Start a blog at your regular site and your ranking will boost.
- Delivery
of your message to a focused audience can be assured.
Current
marketing experts suggest that businesses offer both an email newsletter
as well as a blog in their email communications plan. If you would like
help putting a blog together, call (303-527-2978) or email
us- Mason Works, LLC. would be happy to support your communications
needs.
For more
information on Blogs and why you should consider adding them to your
communication plan, click
here. Hope this helps!
Negotiation
Skills for Success
How do
individuals survive and thrive amid tremendous change?
The most
successful people have learned powerful negotiation skills.
The Acceration
Team at Mason Works feels that the most important tool for personal
and business success and happiness is mastering negotiation skills.
We often engage in similiar negotiations repeatedly throughout our lives,
with children, clients, co-workers and staff. Good negotiation skills
can help you create long lasting, win-win relationships with those around
you. Frank D'Alessandro, the Chairman of the American Negotiation Institute
says, "What you achieve in life is in direct proportion to how
well you negotiate." And we agree!
Since all
of us are aiming for win-win relationships, we will cover a 5 step system
to communicating effectively to get to the best results.
Step
One: Spend the time to know the person that you are negotiating with.
Build rapport and don't confuse the issue under discussion with the
person. Avoid focusing and taking a stand on positions.
Step
Two: Understand the big picture of the issue. Ask as many revealing
questions as you can to uncover the hidden challenges for your "opponent".
Actively listen to understand the challenges and create efficiency.
Step
Three: Introduce new alternatives. Investing time in creating
new solutions that may satisfy both parties can create empathy for the
situation and your "opponent". Don't react emotionally if
they reject your offer, just throw the ideas out to get the juices flowing.
The other participant will usually have great creative ideas as well.
Step
Four: Set the rules for negotiation. Common rules are: boundaries,
methods, behavior and procedures. When rules are set, both parties can
anticipate the structure of the deal to create an even playing field.
Since we work towards a win-win outcome, putting as many things "on
the table" at this point in your negotiations can support a positive
outcome.
Step
Five: Present the deal and go for agreement. To get an agreement,
speak with integrity about the best solution to your challenge. If you
have followed the steps above, you should have all the ingredients for
success at your fingertips. If you have any sticking points, ask questions
to resolve them.
Are you
aware that almost everything is negotiable? No matter what you want,
you can negotiate for it and get it. There are several great resources
for you to use to incorporate these skills into your business. For more
ideas on negotiation, check out Instant Negotiator by Frank D'Alessandro
or Win Squared Software.
Creativity
Corner: Forced Relationships
Welcome
to another month of Creativity Corner. This creativity tool session
will be on Forced Relationships. In our Communication
Matters past issues, we have covered Brainstorming, Mindmapping
and Synectics as tools to develop creative solutions for communication.
Here we will describe another method for gaining new perspectives.
Forced
Relationships, or the act of Confrontation, is the ability to find common
bonds between two or more previously unconnected ideas, concepts, or
things in order to solve a problem. Regardless of the field, the ability
to force relationships is a key skill in creative problem solving resulting
in major leaps from the juxtaposition of ideas or concepts which are
not usually connected or linked.
One of
the main challenges for anyone wishing to be creative, is in provoking
their thinking away from the existing status-quo. There are a number
of ways of doing this such as thinking of similarities to or differences
from some of the more or less random words. The choice of words is arbitrary
since the key here is to provoking thinking. Typical words (branches)
may be; Animals, Transport, People, Textures, Shapes etc.
Stephen
Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,
calls this skill a paradigm shift- a shift in thinking by bringing concepts
into a new environment from an outside source. Most of the greatest
inventions in history came from paradigm shifts. Covey explains that
before you can adopt the seven habits, you'll need to accomplish a "paradigm
shift"--a change in perception and interpretation of how the world
works.
When forcing
relationships to solve a problem, one takes some seemingly unrelated
real-world object or concept and places it on paper side by side with
the problem to be solved. An exhaustive list of attributes is created
under the "unrelated" object or concept. The problem solver
then attempts to find some link or connection between each of the attributes
and the problem to be solved and lists those below the problem statement.
The items in this new list become the initial building blocks towards
the solution of the problem.
The key
to success with this technique is to be alert when making general observations.
The greater the number of relationships one can identify, the greater
one's chances of making original connections. Also defer judgements
on your ideas as they surface. If you can let go and let them build,
you will create a new unusual solution!
For more
information on how to use this creativity tool, go to http://www.cul.co.uk/creative/liberating.htm
, http://www.swlearning.com/marketing/gitm/gitm01-11.html.
We hope
that this tool helps your team create better solutions. Here's to creative
and successful outcomes!
* * * * * * * * *
We hope
that you have enjoyed our January 2005 newsletter and will gain many
useful ideas from our experience to accelerate your business! Please
contact us if you do not want to receive future mailings. For more information,
email kathy@mason-works.com
or go to our website, www.mason-works.com.
The Mason Works Acceleration team looks forward to helping you grow
your business faster and more cost effectively in the coming months.
Best wishes!
Kathy
Kathy Mason,
President
Mason Works,
LLC.
303-527-2978
PS. Please
call us if you need any help with your Marketing Plans for 2005- this
is the perfect time to put everything in place for this year's success!
