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July 23, 2018
Collaboration in Business Made Easy Just By Being CLEAR!

Charmaine Hammond is an expert in collaboration. Over the past 22 years in business, she has been contracted by municipalities, organizations, provincial government, and unions to facilitate collaboration processes such as community needs assessments, community working groups, team charters, and more.  

As a former mediator facilitating the resolution of some of the most complex conflicts in business, collaboration was at the root of Charmaine’s processes. One of the key ingredients of effective collaboration is clarity.

In business, you’ve likely heard the common phrase “less is more” and “bigger is not always better.” This is so true when it comes to communicating your message internally, to your team, and to customers and clients.

In sales, confusion generally results in overwhelm and a “no,” and this pretty much rings true in how confusion lands in a team. When employees are not clear on the vision or purpose, goals, or expectations,  you can pretty much guarantee the result will be disengagement or resistance.

But wait! There is good news!

Being clear can increase sales, improve trust and communication, prevent unnecessary conflict, and get you to results faster.

Here is Charmaine’s Getting CLEAR formula to improve the results of any collaboration:

  • Communicate your project/expectations in a way that is focussed, easy to understand, builds interest, and helps the team see where they fit in.
  • Leave unnecessary information and fluff out of the dialogue.
  • Engage the person early. Don’t make the conversation a monologue; find a point of interest that will help people embrace the information.
  • Ask questions to get the person or team engaged in the conversation and Avoid acronyms and terms that are not general knowledge or are trigger words/terms.
  • Repeat and remind the team of the most important details in a different way as you close the conversation.

When you are preparing to deliver important information to your team that requires their commitment, support, and engagement, it is important to work on scripting your presentation. Far too often, people “wing it” and the result is ambiguous explanations that lead to assumptions or rumours. Here are a few tips to communicate and collaborate in a CLEAR way:

  • Identify the 3 most important talking points about your message that need to come out right away.
  • Keep the explanation brief — about 2-3 minutes. People will zone out after that. You don’t need to share all the details right off the bat, just a short description that piques interest.
  • Practice your explanation in the mirror at least 10 times (and refine and modify as you go).
  • Video yourself (use your cell phone), practicing so you can critique and modify.
  • Avoid acronyms and industry speak; these often decrease interest or ignite frustration if these acronyms and terms are “trigger” words.
  • Make sure you have answered/prepared for these questions (these are the questions that your team will ask you!)

    • WHO
    • WHAT
    • WHERE
    • WHEN
    • WHY
    • HOW

Remember… clarity is key!

~ Charmaine Hammond, Raise a Dream

About Raise a Dream: Charmaine Hammond, CSP, and Rebecca Kirstein helps authors, speakers, and entrepreneurs raise their dreams, launch their books, and make a bigger difference in the world through collaboration, partnership, and sponsorship. Charmaine is a 4-time best-selling author with five books and is authored in seven others. You can follow Raise a Dream at:

Website: www.raiseadream.com
Facebook: http://bit.ly/RADFacebook
Twitter: http://bit.ly/RADTwitter
LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/RADLinkedIn
Instagram: http://bit.ly/RADInstagram

Download your free sponsorship ebook from www.raiseadream.com.

June 21, 2018
Business Cards Are Still a Thing!

Just because we live in a digital world does not mean that business cards are a thing of the past. They are still important — both for you to have and to collect.

You might be asking, “Why gather business cards? I’ll just find the person on Facebook.”

True, you can do this. But at a networking event, do you actually get into your Facebook account during a conversation, find the person, and send him or her a connection request? And if you’re at a business meeting, a trade show, or looking for sponsors, Facebook is not where you should be starting. LinkedIn is the place you want to be connected.

Collecting contacts through business cards allows you to easily find the person on LinkedIn. If the person changes his or her job or email, the address you have will no longer work. If you are connected on LinkedIn, you can still easily connect. As well, you can search LinkedIn by titles, by business, and locations, which is so helpful.

Thanks to digital technology, you needn’t worry about storing collections of received business cards. You can use apps on your phone like Card Scan to enter people into your contacts (and then follow up by making that connection more permanent through LinkedIn).

It is not only important to collect business cards, it is important to share your card at events. Effective business cards serve as tangible prompts to help people follow up, remember your brand, and remind people who you are and what you do.

If you have a storefront location, make sure you have business cards by the till/register. If you do not have a storefront location, make sure you bring business cards with you and have extra in your car and briefcase. They are such a low cost item to print, yet every event I speak at and every business or networking event I attend, I am always surprised by how often I hear, “Sorry, I ran out of cards,” or “So sorry, I forgot my cards at home.”

To make your business card effective, be sure the font of your card is readable without a magnifying glass. From the events I attend, I often receive cards that have great images and look pretty, but you can’t read anything on the card… so into the recycle bin for those. There is a quote that comes to mind: “How you do something is how you do everything.” Don’t leave people with the impression that you are forgetful, unorganized, or do not check your work for readability.

So yes, business cards are still a thing.

~ Charmaine Hammond, Raise a Dream

About Raise a Dream: Charmaine Hammond, CSP, and Rebecca Kirstein helps authors, speakers, and entrepreneurs raise their dreams, launch their books, and make a bigger difference in the world through collaboration, partnership, and sponsorship. Charmaine is a 4-time best-selling author with five books and is authored in seven others. You can follow Raise a Dream at:

Website: www.raiseadream.com
Facebook: http://bit.ly/RADFacebook
Twitter: http://bit.ly/RADTwitter
LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/RADLinkedIn
Instagram: http://bit.ly/RADInstagram

Download your free sponsorship ebook from www.raiseadream.com.

December 13, 2017
Building A Virtual Team

Having a team and contracting professionals who are able to take on the tasks that are not within your genius will help you build a stronger, scalable, and sustainable business.

We live in an era where our teams can now be virtual; you may not need a brick and mortar office with full-time employees. Over the years having owned several businesses and having started several non-profit organizations, I have had the opportunity to create different office/team models, each having its strengths and challenges. In my current businesses, Hammond International Inc. and Raise A Dream (which I co-own with Rebecca Kirstein), working with virtual teams has been a big plus.

Rebecca and I live in different parts of the country, yet effectively run our business by setting it up to be mobile-friendly so that we can work from anywhere in the world. When we created Raise A Dream in January 2017, we explored our strengths individually and collectively. Importantly, we identified both the tasks that we love and those that give us “grey hair” or cause us to drift into space and zone out.

To complement our creative and visionary goals, we discovered that we needed team members that enjoyed and were skilled at creating systems, building out processes, and designing the architectural components of the business back end.

Our team is comprised of a certified Online Business Manager (Stacey) who is not only exceptionally skilled at systems, processes, and the back end of the business operations, she loves managing details! We also have Tom and Chris. Tom has expertise in branding, website design, creating the communication flow architecture, and copywriting for sales copy. Chris edits video, does SEO, and also handles some of the web responsibilities. We also have Jaime who LOVES research.

This team, created by design, helps us raise the dreams of our clients. Their unique skill sets support Rebecca and I in having the time and energy to do what we do best and stay in our genius.

We meet virtually by Zoom every week. Our priority setting and daily business activities are created through our RPM system (Results / Purpose / Massive action plan), which is put into tasks through the team tool we use, Asana. For everything we do more than once, a system or process is created. This adds tremendous value to your business and how well it functions.

Recently, I interviewed Tina Forsyth who has an Online Business Manager certification program. Tina is highly respected in the entrepreneur world for her experience in helping entrepreneurs and businesses create high-functioning teams. Tina stressed the importance of knowing your own strengths so that you can hire to your skill deficits or the tasks you don’t like to do (or don’t know how to). In the interview, Tina reported that many entrepreneurs attempt to save money by trying to “be everything and do everything” in the business. The challenge is that this approach delays profit and business success.

A great exercise is to track where you are spending your time every day. From there, you can better identify what specific tasks make sense to delegate or contract out for maximum results and to free up your time to work on the business and in your genius!

Charmaine Hammond, Raise A Dream
www.raiseadream.com

Copyright Pamela Chatry 2017. All Rights Reserved