“Networking, your own best sales rep and quad dreams”

I attended a professional networking event last week hosted by the local Chamber of Commerce and one of my old Alma Maters Saint Mary's University. It was my first organized networking gig and a unique learning experience. It also reaffirmed a few things.

The networking setup was that after you broke off into small groups, a representative goes to the other groups on your behalf to solicit something you need. Not bad if you are not so good at selling yourself but I learned that the best person to sell your own product when it comes to running your own business is yourself. You have all of the answers. You know the history of the company, what direction you want it to grow, what your limits may be and, above all, you come off as passionate and sincere.

Sure there may be times where you flounder when an unexpected question is thrown your way. But at the least you can confidently say, “I had not thought of that” or “I do not know”. Or, even better, “That’s a great question. I will find out the answer and get back to you right away”.

On this point two things come to mind, confidence and belief. Relating back to my posting about belief, when I’m promoting myself and trying to get new clients I feel almost invincible. I can field any question and deflect any comment to hopefully create an opportunity simply because I know everything about my company.

It’s a type of game play. Like trying to figure out where the opening is to get through that enables me to offer something to this person that they want. Now, mind you, this is usually during the first contact, but I feel that you need that confidence (supported by belief) to keep moving forward as this may be the only contact you get with this person.

I think that's enough selling and business babble for awhile. Next week I'm going to get to talking about video related topics. Let's tease it with video podcasting, creativity at NSCADU and the Red camera.

Oh, did I mention that I dream in quad these days.

I have to get rid of this Mac monkey before I bore myself.

ThinkSecret.com reported that the new Power Mac will be unveiled at the 2006 Apple World Wide Developers Conference and there will be a quad Intel version. Oh my. That will be blisteringly fast.

They also reported that it will have a new enclosure as well. Now that will be cool to see. I am a big fan of Apple’s designs and I’m sure this will be slick as usual.

Speaking to a Mac retailer though, they said that an August roll out might mean delivery a few months later. Months!!! I hope not. I am putting big faith in the fact that Apple knows everyone has been waiting for these babies and is expecting the onslaught of orders to come. But all shall be revealed in a few weeks. Time to save the pennies.

Next week I’m going to see if Ray will setup an RSS feed for the blog for anyone interested.

Thanks

CM