Six key questions for your personal success

October 16th, 2007 by Michael Gottschalk

The everyday life of an independant professional is characterized through project work or consulting, administration and various sales activities to keep or to improve your position in your professional environment. Focussed self-marketing is one of the upcoming challenges in the work environment in the 21th century.

Have you ever thought about your personal value proposition which makes you as a person more interesting than the others in your competition for new projects? Work it out! It helps you spending time on sales activities with the highest chance to close a deal and at the end of the day the highest chance to increase your productivity:

• What is your customer aiming to achieve?
• Why does your customer need to act?
• What are the critical success factors for your customer?
• What is your solution?
• What are the benefits for your customer (measurable if possible)?
• And at the end: Why you and not anyone else?

If you don´t find a clear and transparent answer to one of this 6 questions – spend your time on more promising sales possibilities. It saves time and increases your efficency.

--> Posted at October 16th, 2007

First marketing rule for freelancers

October 14th, 2007 by Klaus Wiedemann

At Freelance Switch, I just stumbled across an interesting article by Jonathan Fields on simple marketing secrets for freelancers. I especially like the first one, as it is almost too simple, but I think it is highly effective:

Call back first!

If you receive an inquiry on your mailbox or email, or you hear about an upcoming project: be the first to call back. As Jonathan points out (and this is definitely in line with my experience): most people do not call back in time, even if it’s about a potentially upcoming project.

A couple of months ago, we’ve been looking for some Typo3 support for our company website to resolve some technical issues. Through our personal network, we received a couple of recommendations, and asked them per email to give us a call (First test for responsiveness!). One never called, one took two weeks to return the call, one called the next day. Guess who got the contract?

--> Posted at October 14th, 2007

The new DAISHO Beta version is now available

October 11th, 2007 by Sandra Lenz

From now on we are no longer developing our software tool in stealth mode, but we are ready to present it to the world. Our Beta version is finished.
We have created a strategic weapon, designed exactly for the working environment of the 21st century. It’s a software which puts you in control, not somebody else.

To give you a main idea about it, here some key facts:
It’s a Goal, Time and Contact Management software based on P2P functionality.

With DAISHO you can…

• easily track your goals
• plan your capacity goal-oriented and on a long-term basis with time budgeting
• manage your goals and activities effectively with the context concept
• save time
• create and cultivate your social network successfully

DAISHO gives you transparency and more space for value adding activities. Well used, you get the ROI already after a few days.

We want to encourage you to test the Beta-Version of DAISHO for free and without limitation.
You can download it here: http://www.daisho-blacksmith.de/en/download/

We are well aware that this version needs final polishing. Therefore we really appreciate any feedback from you. As we want to provide you with the optimal tool, we need your support and your help. Please write any suggestions to: feedback@daisho-blacksmith.com.

We hope you enjoy testing DAISHO!

--> Posted at October 11th, 2007

Social Networking Slides from Barcamp Munich

October 9th, 2007 by Klaus Wiedemann

Martin Koser from frogpond held a couple of interesting sessions about social networks and their application in an enterprise context. You can also find some summaries of sessions he attended, quite helpful for those of you who could not make it to Munich.

--> Posted at October 9th, 2007

Barcamp – Conferences for the 21st Century

October 7th, 2007 by Klaus Wiedemann

What’s all this fuss about working in the 21st century is dramatically different from the working environment of the last century?

Remember these conferences in a dimmed hotel room (preferably without any daylight), with one guy running the show, trying to convince the audience that he has the best product in the world? And all the others trying not to fall asleep…

The Barcamp series (I just attended my first Barcamp in Munich this weekend) is completely different: no agenda, no dull powerpoint slides, but a very interactive discussion and networking event with people willing to contribute to the success of the event.

For those of you not familiar with the format: In the morning, the agenda is empty. Participants suggest sessions they are willing to hold, and if the feedback from the audience seems encouraging, they just schedule the session for one of the available slots. Topics range from Web 2.0, social networks to business models and venture capital (one of the sessions I offered) to search engine optimization. Even more exotic sessions like photography have been offered in Munich.

From my very personal impression, most of the participants are either freelancers, working in startups or are working on projects to turn into a company later on – very entrepreneurial, with a lot of insights to share. You can tell during the sessions that people just share the experiences of their daily work instead somebody reading slides he received just an hour ago.

For me, the barcamp format is an indication of the way work will be organised in the future: networked, with independent professionals, self organising (to a much higher degree than in the past): new opportunities arise on the go…

So I think it is not too bold to state that barcamp is a conference format for the 21st century.

PS.: Special Thanks to the guys organising the events, Franz Patzig and Jörg Battermann: you did an excellent job! Cisco as main sponsor for location and catering ensured that all participants could stay focussed on content instead on infrastructure issues.

--> Posted at October 7th, 2007