Over the last couple months I’ve been on a lot of webinars, Zoom meetings, and other online events, as I’m sure many of you have. Besides my Zoom Business Social & Happy Hour events I’ve attended ones hosted by Business Brokerage Press, Mark Cuban, Alan Weiss, Ted Leverette, Patricia Fripp, and others. Here are my take-aways from them, in no particular order.
- Make a great first impression, including on social media. Be polite and appear better than others.
- The best thing to do with employees is communicate and make them feel comfortable. More communication than ever as it will create trust.
- Ask your employees! And don’t use language of war and fear.
- What would you do different if starting your business now?
- It’s important what business buyers say to sellers and brokers (first impression). It’s equally important what business sellers and brokers say to buyers, especially qualified ones.
- We all need direction not conditions. You have to be for something (which reminds me of the verse from Hamilton, “If you stand for nothing, Burr, what’ll you fall for?”).
- Be a sounding board and authentic.
- There’s more “checking out” others than ever. What do people see when they Google your name?
- People are terrified and scared.
- Be a resource; write a lot of content.
- Internet marketing will stay strong.
- What’s going on should make us willing to look at different ways to do thing.
- An upside to Zoom, Teams, WebEx, etc. is you get to see people as they live, not as they present themselves for business. Their kids, dogs, cats, etc. let you get to know them better.
- We (our clients, customers, and ourselves) seek validation.
- Any company can do well in a boom.
- Ask, what will change forever?
- Some owners won’t have the stomach to keep going (and will want to sell).
- If you’re not changing your marketing be prepared to do so.
- You will recover.
- Errors are seldom fatal.
- People crave confidence.
- Don’t use this situation for procrastination.
- Be present online with 60% tips and 40% sales related.
- Block people on LinkedIn who ask to connect and then try to sell you something.
- From an insightful PE guy before it really hit the fan – expect GDP to decline by 10% or more, unemployment to hit 15% or more, and it will be really tough for many people for 18-36 months.
- He also said entertainment won’t return soon and as an example noted Taylor Swift cancelled her tour even though 15-31-year old people don’t seem to care about anything (like the virus).
* Thanks to Marvin Gaye for the title. J
