KENSEL TRACY: Sold and Emotionally Violated

by Kensel Tracy

Over the years, much has been said about advertising and its ability to get consumers and businesses to make emotional buying decisions.

These decisions are based on supplying the right kind of truthful information and then getting the potential customer or client to respond to the information supplied.

The other day, as a consumer, I, too, was confronted with such a decision.

This decision called for me to buy, and, for a moment, I was ready. I was sold, sold emotionally, and violated in the process. In the game of networking we talk a lot about social capital and developing trust with others through the art of networking. I wanted to share a story that happened a few years ago and left me feeling some what emotionally violated. For those of you who regularly read my articles this one takes a little different twist. It was originally published a few years ago however the essence still remains true today.

Some of you have most likely had your trust violated as well: by the mystery man "J."
"J" shows up in a typewritten envelope with a Philadelphia postmark. "J" encourages you to read an article by Leah Thayer, a book review on the guide "The American Speaker".

Enclosed is a page that looks as if it has been torn from a magazine and folded to look familiar. "J" sticks his initial on a "post-it" note telling me personally, "Try this, it works." I read the article top to bottom because it seems to have been sent by a friend of mine. I feel confident someone that knows me is truly trying to help me out.

I feel good that some friend knows and cares enough to send me information. I am truly blessed to have friends and business associates who truly care about me. Right? Or wrong.

Who is "J"? John my best man, Jim my high school buddy, Janis from sales, or James the vice-president? I spend the better part of an evening and early morning trying to figure out who the mysterious "J" is.

The next day, as I enter my office, a colleague bemoans direct mail and the lowest form of direct mail he got this week. The direct mail from "J."
How could "J" deceive me, and send this same advice to hundreds or thousands of other friends. It can't be, I'm special. "J" only sent this advice to me.

Disappointed, I realize that a bond of trust has been violated by "J." So, I investigate.

"J" turns out to be "The George Town Publishing House" in Washington,D.C. and when I contact them to get more information, I am told this was the method commonly used by them to sell their various publications.

"The American Speaker", (at a rip-off US$297.00 plus US$30.00 for shipping and handling), was the book being thrust upon me by my new concerned friend "J."

"J" had marked the document at the appropriate spot with which to order using tick marks and circles as would a true friend or business associate.

The whole piece was a scam. "J" was not a true friend, but an impostor: I felt betrayed. How could "J" say he was a real friend when all he wanted me to do was get me to buy a book? How could he assume it would work for me when he didn't know me?

"J" was crossing the boundary ever so slightly, but enough to make me feel cheap, used and mad. The lowest form of mistrust since I thought it was from someone I trusted from my confident business network built carefully over the years.

Having been in the advertising industry over thirty years. During this time I have seen a number of approaches used over years to try get consumers to buy. There have been a number of questionable calls. Yet,I have seen few tactics that callously pretended to be a caring, concerned friend or business associate.

For a second, I, a senior ad executive, had let my guard down. I trusted my friend "J," and I had been misled. "J" is a cheap imitation, a misleading piece of direct mail, a fraudulent piece of paper made to look like help from someone trusted.

I took two steps back and realized that in a business I love and care about, one always needs to be on the lookout for the "J"s of the advertising and direct mail world. In networking one cannot be to careful either because as trusting as we all are the "j's" of the world are always lurking. This does not mean you should go on the defensive and not share. It just means that one always needs to be aware that the "j's" the misleading businesses and business people are still out there plying their trade.

Kensel Tracy is the Marketing Coach and is a Senior Partner with The Corporate Coachworkz Inc. located in Chelsea, Quebec. He is also the President of Business Over Breakfast (BoB Clubs)a business to business networking referral club now opening up in cities across Canada and the United States. For information checkout www.bobclubs.com

For more information, please visit Kensel's TNNW Bio.


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KENSEL TRACY: Sold and Emotionally Violated

BREAKTHROUGH NETWORKING: The Networking Chain

Breakthrough Networking with Lillian D. Bjorseth

To accumulate important relationship wealth, you need to use the right tools … in this case stellar networking and communication skills. Let’s examine what networking is and why it is an absolute must in your relationship-building tool chest.

Networking is an active, dynamic process that links people into mutually beneficial relationships to build a new kind of wealth: social (relationship) capital.

• Active - You cannot sit back and wait to be contacted or approached. You have to make it happen! The knight or princess on the white horse will not drive up to your door with referrals or job offers. You have to take the initiative to participate and meet others.
• Dynamic - People, events and information are constantly changing. No two interchanges are the same. You have to keep up with your industry, your business, your company, your community, your friends and, most of all, you have to hone your techniques continually so you can apply them universally.
• A process - Networking is a series of hierarchical actions and interactions that leads to an end: a result, a solution, a relationship, an answer, a sale, a job.
• Links - The process connects, bonds and couples people with one another. Just as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link so is your network only as strong as your weakest link.

What Can A Conductor Teach You About Leadership Strategies ?

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Your Networking Chain

Your chain is comprised of different size links as well as broken links. Take a few minutes now and decide whose names go where in your chain. How much work does your chain needs to make it strong again?

• Big, thick links = people who are strong connections and you can always count on.

• Medium links = people with whom you have more casual relationships and can usually count on.

• Small links = people you may or may not be able to count on. You need to work on strengthening the relationship.

• Broken links = relationships have gone awry because you haven’t bothered to stay in touch. These are vital links you need to repair to make your chain as strong as it can be.

• Mutually beneficial relationships - Networking is as much about giving as it is about getting. You and people you connect with and connect to others need to mutually profit from the interactions to make it work. Just as you can’t take money from your savings account until you deposit it, you can’t take from the universe until you have helped others. And you don’t need to keep track because the natural law of reciprocity makes sure you will get when you give.

• Social (relationship) capital – This kind of wealth is what helps you amass financial capital. Who you know is more important up front than what you know. Advanced degrees and experience won’t open doors for you. It’s people who do that … people I call your network of “knob turners.”

Lillian D. Bjorseth, internationally known speaker, trainer, coach and author of the new third edition of Breakthrough Networking: Building Relationships That Last. http://www.duoforce.com/; http://www.greaterchicagonetworking.com/, lillianspeaks@duoforce.com

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Posted to THE NATIONAL NETWORKER (TNNW). All rights reserved.

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BREAKTHROUGH NETWORKING: The Networking Chain

BREAKTHROUGH NETWORKING: Build a New Kind of Wealth

Breakthrough Networking with Lillian D. Bjorseth

They are signs of the times. Your neighbors losing their jobs. Home foreclosures. Difficulty getting business loans. Associates still driving their 2003 (and earlier!) cars.

They all deal with financial capital … or the lack thereof.

What complicates these situations for so many people is the lack of another vital kind of capital – the social kind. A type that many people don’t bother to build, especially when the economy is good and they have a job they think is solid. After all, why take personal time to attend after-hour networking events or spend weekends on LinkedIn or Facebook tweaking your profile or responding to group postings.

Starting today, it will be my monthly privilege to share information I have garnered about building social capital from a Fortune 100 career as well as the owner of two companies and experiences from speaking, training and coaching nationwide and the author of myriad products.

I learned as a young woman in what was then an even more male-dominated corner-office environment that what I knew was secondary to whom I knew. I’ve had some powerful male mentors who taught me quickly that power by association was just as powerful as that associated with title …when used professionally.

I learned through experience to listen and ponder rather than speak and share when I spent time behind closed doors with vice presidents … and me. My power by association gained me access.

Building social capital, your network of knob turners, is analogous. Relationships, first and foremost, are built on trust. Listening and pondering will help to establish that trust much more quickly than speaking and sharing all you know about others or yourself. In the former case, you might say what was shared with you as a trusted colleague or in the latter, you may appear to be egotistical or too full of yourself.

You invest money and gain interest or buy property to get equity to build financial capital. Building social capital is about investing mostly time and giving unselfishly to gain more contacts to build a network of personal and professional relationships.

Social capital takes precedence in your success over degrees and job experience until you have managed to get inside the door. In fact, until you have built a network of “knob turners,” you may struggle to even get a job interview and the appointment for a loan.

So how, do you accumulate the quality and quantity of knob turners you want and need to accomplish your goals? Stayed tuned month after month after month. That’s what this column will be all about!

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Lillian D. Bjorseth is the President of Duoforce Enterprises, Inc., speaker, and author of several books including her latest: Breakthrough Networking. She is also the co-founder of the Greater Chicago Networking Extravaganza which is now entering its eighth year.
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Posted to THE NATIONAL NETWORKER. To subscribe for your free newsletter, go to http://www.thenationalnetworker.com/. For the complete National Networker Relationship Capital Toolkit and a free, continuous RSS feed (available either by traditional RSS or by direct email), go to: http://thenationalnetworkerweblog.blogspot.com/. You are also invited to click our buttons:


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BREAKTHROUGH NETWORKING: Build a New Kind of Wealth

CANADA: Donna Messer, Canada's Own Marketing Guru - Gives Advice on Networking

By Kensel Tracy, Canadian Bureau Chief

When you reach Donna Messer, Canada’s “Networking Guru”, on the phone, her cheery voice answers as if she has known you for life time. Two minutes into our conversation she drops her first bit of “social capital”. She is sorry she is a bit late as she just got back from lunch with a Senior Vice President from Petro Canada, one of Canada’s largest petro chemical companies. To Donna, “social capital” is the byproduct of networking and the term she uses extensively to cultivate value for her network.

“The key to understanding “social capital” says Donna “is to learn as much as you can about the person you talking to so that you can develop and understand what you can offer and later on potentially receive”, one of her golden rules of networking. “Social capital” she says also means to: “never ask for money, never sell and always find out what others want to buy, then have something that you can offer that fits the bill.”. You can now see why Donna Messer is called Canada’s “Networking Guru”.

Donna was born a networker. Starting out working for the Director of Agriculture for the State of Illinois, one of Donna’s first jobs was to help build business with the State’s biggest trading partner Canada and Canadian companies wanting to do business in the State. She became a major corporate match maker finding out what companies had for sale and providing buying opportunities for everything from the famous “No Name Brand” brand of products, dairy and other agricultural products including working with the one of the first exporters of shitake mushrooms.

From there she formed her own company called “Connect Us” which was a bit of play on words for her business and soon she had a thriving database of high level contacts from which she has built an impressive array of business by linking individuals from her network with other individuals or with outsiders wanting in.

Her business is also an extension of her own personal ethical business philosophy. She gives much more than she gets and has a significant amount of business referred to her directly based on her own “social capital” and the relationships she has formed and gifts of gold that she has given to others. One of her strengths and one of the things she says that that others should consider when building their network “is to develop a database of contacts, to cultivate a contacts “social capital” and to keep intensive records on your computer so that when you recognize an opportunity for someone in your network and then you can pass it along right away.” Donna has over 10,000 people in her own personal database.

Donna has also built a network of clients and fans through getting out there and talking with others through ongoing paid public speaking engagements, training others on networking and using the media, by writing articles on networking and by launching a women’s magazine called “Business Women Canada”. She has also written a Canadian bestseller called “Effective Networking Strategies” which is available at Amazon.com or can be downloaded for free from her website.

Constantly on the road speaking to groups, organizations and companies, she recently finished a stint coaching public service employees for the Ontario Government on how to network amongst other government departments in order to make contacts to get major projects completed.

Besides using the term “social capital”, Donna also preachers and uses a term which she developed called RISE™ which has become the firm’s personal strategy for successful networking. RISE ™ stands for: Rapport, Information, Solutions, Ethically. It’s a simple process and one worth noting for any personal networker which includes working inside a culture of integrity. Donna’s company now works world wide developing rapport, gathering information, coming up with solutions and doing it in an ethical manner. Her RISE™ system is used extensively for networking throughout international markets in helping to build business for companies throughout Canada, the U.S. and internationally.

While she agrees with the smaller structured networking groups and clubs like BNI and Business over Breakfast (BoB) Clubs for small businesses or individuals just starting out, she believes that everyone needs to be open to understanding what another company or person needs and doing their best to try and help others; which is the true point behind effective networking. Donna’s company has also worked with all kinds of groups including individuals with special needs, seniors, not for profits, for profit, government organizations and major corporations. A lot of people call themselves a “Networking Gurus” however Donna Messer is truly someone that walks the walk and talks the talk

Thanking Donna, I am just about to hang up the phone and she stops me saying “I need to know about you and your “social capital” Kensel and what is it you do and what is it that I can help you with”. I promptly say “well nothing really”. Within minutes, Donna has me talking about marketing and my marketing coaching company, The Corporate Coachworkz Inc. and then gives me two people which I should contact to help me build my business following up with an email after our interview to remind me; the sign of a true networker and a true “Networking Guru”.

To reach Donna Messer to get more information on how Donna can help you personally or your organization, see Donna’s Website at www.connectuscanada.com.

Kensel Tracy the Marketing Coach is a Senior Partner with the Corporate Coachworkz Inc. a coaching company that specializes in marketing, coaching and executive coaching and helps small, medium and large sized businesses grow and prosper.
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CANADA: Donna Messer, Canada's Own Marketing Guru - Gives Advice on Networking

The Laws of Relationship Capital

The Fourth Law

By Adam J. Kovitz, CEO, Editor-in-Chief
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As we continue to discuss the ten Laws of Relationship Capital, it is always good to have a quick review. The first two laws (detailed in Part 1 and Part 2) relate to whom and/or what can possess Relationship Capital. The Third (detailed, so far in Part 3) through Sixth Laws focus on the mechanics of Relationship Capital. Both Third and Fourth Laws deal respectively to the famous “Quantity vs. Quality” debate that most networking strategists ponder when debating in which networks to invest their time as well as deploy their marketing strategies.

The Fourth Law

If the Third Law is a statement of the effects and implications of quantity and its effect on Relationship Capital, then (by process of elimination) the Fourth Law does the same for quality:

Relationship Capital Value increases or decreases proportionally as the perceived quality of relationship increases or decreases.

The Fourth Law while simply stated and seemingly intuitive has some major implications.

Relationship Capital Value

The Fourth Law introduces the concept of Relationship Capital Value. The reason for this is that the first three laws discuss Relationship Capital from a capacity standpoint. The Fourth Law implies that due to perceived quality, the value of Relationship Capital Value (measured in “Relationship Points” or RPs, as per RNIA) can fluctuate, much like a company’s stock, over time. Therefore, Relationship Capital can exist in three basic states:

1. Positive – the perceived relationship by both parties involved is one that is favorable, pleasurable, enhancing, meaningful, useful and/or supports the sustainability and/or survival of the person, product or business unit in question
2. Negative – the perceived relationship by both parties involved is one that is unfavorable, toxic, diminishing, meaningless, useless and/or leads to eventual destruction of the person, product or business unit in question
3. Neutral (zero) – the relationship is unknown, unrecognized, brand new, irrelevant, inert, forgotten and/or has no effect whatsoever upon a person, product or business unit. The Fifth Law addresses this state in greater detail.

Perceived Quality

The Effects of Time: Influence and Impact

The Fourth Law also implies the element of time as perceptions regarding specific relationships change based upon actions (or lack thereof). In Newtonian physics, any value measured over time can be researched and used for further analysis to gain a better understanding of the world around us. Much in the way, velocity is the rate of distance traversed over time, influence is the rate at which Relationship Capital changes over time:

In = DRC / Dt

Where:
In = Influence (measured in RP/s)
RC = Relationship Capital
t = Time

In the same way that acceleration is the rate of change in velocity over time, relational impact is the rate at which influence changes over time:

Im = DIn / Dt

Where:
Im = Impact (measured in RP/s²)
In = Influence
t = Time

Therefore, if we were to graph the Relationship Capital of a person, product or business unit over time, we could look at the rate of change (a steep rise due to the endorsement of a popular figure or a moderate decline due to layoffs) to determine its influence. We could also quantify the level of impact generated (positively or negatively) due to particular events that took place. Imagine doing this for historical figures, identifying areas of psychological trauma, etc. The possibilities are endless when we perform this type of analysis.

Reputational Mass

The longer one’s Relationship Capital remains relatively consistent at a value while the number of connections grows, the more of a reputation (or tendency) it has, and becomes much harder to change due to inertial effects. Last month we stated an equation of the Third Law as:

RC = S(R)

Where:
RC = Relationship Capital, and
R = Number of relationships

As we stated, this was inaccurate, and relied on the Fourth Law, but was useful for purposes of illustration. The more accurate statement is:

Rm = S(R)

Where:
Rm = Reputational Mass (measured in connections), and
R = Number of relationships

Take, for example, an historical figure like Sir Isaac Newton, with whom we all have a relationship even though he has long gone. Because of his deeds, accomplishments and actions, he has earned a reputation based upon the Relationship Capital profile that he developed over the course of his life. If a new historian suddenly shocked the world with evidence “contrary to popular opinion”, information would be suspect and unlikely to change the value of his Relationship Capital too quickly unless considerably substantiated and widely accepted, which actually did happen (to a much lesser extent) upon the discovery of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

Reputational Momentum

As Newton’s First Law states: “Objects at rest, tend to stay at rest and objects in motion tend to stay in motion, unless acted upon by an outside force”, there is a link between Relationship Capital and reputation. If Reputational mass exists, then what happens when we dramatically increase (or decrease) Relationship Capital over a considerably shorter period of time and have a considerable number of relationships? You got it…reputational momentum, which can be calculated as:

Rp = Rm * In

Where:
Rp = Reputational momentum (measured in connectionsRP/s)
Rm = Reputational mass
In = Influence

Reputational Force

For Relationship Capital to drastically change amongst all connections there would need to be a considerable amount of reputational force exerted on such a system through action and deed. Again, if one’s network has mass which can build momentum, reputational force must be exerted to positively or negatively influence it or to bring it to rest. Therefore, based upon Newton’s Second Law:

F_Reputational = Rm * Im

Where:
F_Reputational = Reputational force (measured in connectionsRP/s²)
Rm = Reputational mass
Im = Impact

Over time, reputational force could be quantified and analyzed, based upon individual actions like direct mail, advertising, word-of-mouth, genocide, keeping promises, misdirection, etc. as a means to influence Relationship Capital. Again, the implications are quite substantial. Was this what Isaac Asimov foretold in his groundbreaking Foundation series of books when he introduced the concept of Psychohistory? Time, will indeed tell.

Next month we will be taking a break from the ten Laws of Relationship Capital to indulge in what has become a February tradition at The National Networker as we celebrate our third anniversary; my State of the Industry Address. In March, we will resume with Part 5 and the Fifth Law of Relationship Capital…stay tuned!

The Emergence of the Relationship Economy

Relationship Capital is the cornerstone of the Relationship Economy, which I have defined as “a business and social ecosystem in which one’s interconnectedness and integrity determine wealth, prosperity and success.” I am proud to have contributed discussion of the Ten Laws of Relationships Capital to the upcoming book The Emergence of the Relationship Economy, due out on January 19, 2008 as an eBook and on February 1, 2008 in hardcopy. It is being considered a “must read” for anyone responsible for the strategic direction of their business. If you would like to purchase your own copy of The Emergence of the Relationship Economy, please click here.

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The Laws of Relationship Capital

Jon Ingham & Social capital

from Jon Ingham's blog "The Social Business: Social capital"
& his book

Strategic Human Capital Management: Creating Value Through People

Social or relational capital is an emergent property arising from the organisational system – the organisation and the people working in the organisation. Social capital includes the network of relationships and features of social life within an organisation, the knowledge tied up and shared in these relationships, the ability to work together with other people in value creation, the corporate culture, beliefs lived and values demonstrated by employees. It provides the glue that holds organisations together.





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Jon Ingham & Social capital

You may be a community freeloader...(a great Social Capital discussion)

from the blog

http://www.horsepigcow.com

"You May be a Community Freeloader if you..."

Balancing Your Social Capital Accounts

Now, I don’t want to reduce every interaction we human beings have with another person to being a transaction, but, in effect, it is. If I ask a friend for a favor, she is bound oblige. However, if I ask that same friend for ten favors, she may start to feel like I’ve depleted my ‘allowance’ on my account with her. Of course, with different people, we have more leeway. With our close friends and family we have loads of Social Capital to withdraw from and as our relationships get more casual, the less influence and favor we carry with others.

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You may be a community freeloader...(a great Social Capital discussion)

Social Capital is Not a Fixed Investment

from J. LeRoy's Evolving Web
Jim Benson's Cooperation Conversations

Do you hate someone who likes you? Have you felt snubbed or insulted by someone you trusted? Has someone who is an utter bastard made you feel bad or self-conscious by saying cruel things?

Or

Have you met someone and really gotten along quickly? Have you taken a previously contentious relationship and made it work well? Has a kind word from a stranger made the whole day seem better?

A lot of this may be due to Social Capital.
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Social Capital is Not a Fixed Investment

The Value of the Network: Links As Social Capital (by Joe Lamantia)

August 30, 2007 03:17 PM | Posted in: Networks and Systems

This is a small site with modest traffic. But it is still the case that a substantial set of inbound links lead people from diverse origins - search engines, blogs, content aggregators, feed readers, directories, etc. - to many destinations within the site every day. Some of these connections are visible in the del.icio.us tag clouds that appear with individual postings, my contribution to the Web's ongoing collective experiment with tagging and social bookmarking.

French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu named this set of connections and the social relationships associated with them in the early 1970s, coining the term social capital, and thereby inspiring legions of civic and international organizations to create development, investment, and management strategies for this new valuable kind of resource.

But what is the value of the network?

Fast forward a bit, and we can see that no matter how you choose to calculate that value, Google has built a business relying the new resource of cumulative social capital, using it via mechanisms such as latent semantic indexing.

And we can see that in giving form and focus to the idea of social capital, Bourdieu set the conceptual stage for the recent explosion of social media and networking applications. Simultaneously destinations - albeit of unknown lifespan - and business ventures, the social networks are recent exemplars of longtime cultural movements of reification, virtualization, and visualization of fields - another key concept identified by Bourdieu.

Behind the scenes, the information architecture that solidifies the limited social capital of this site in physical / digital form is a motley collection of disparately named HTML files, tag destination pages, cgi-powered content streams, RSS feeds, local search results sets, etc. The prospect of getting another publishing platform to mimic this miscellany was - like tuning an instrument to play songs composed with notes from another music system - not something I could do as quickly and cheaply.

And so in combination with the perpetual urgency of the DIY mindset, the imperative of preserving the value of the existing store of social capital made the decision to upgrade along an existing path to MT4 simple.

Architecturally, this is the equivalent of sticking with the brand name you know well.

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The Value of the Network: Links As Social Capital (by Joe Lamantia)