It's Time to Get Some New Business.

Hey the New Year has started. It’s time to get some New Business.

Everyone is jacked up. It’s that time of the Year.

Smart New Business folks would have lined up January meetings in December. Their calendars are full with what they want to achieve versus random outreaches to strangers.

I got an email from a stranger on 1/6 at nine in the morning.

He shared his name and offered to be my preferred web development company. He would be happy to offer advice on my site. My site is not as important as my content these days.

He would love the possibility of helping each other out, but I didn’t feel much of what’s in it for me in his email. Then again he wasn’t thinking of me when he crafted it because he doesn’t even know me. He was thinking of his own needs.

I felt like answering but I never do.

The Internet is 25 years old and I have numerous partners already that I help and they help me. No promises from a stranger but shared successful life experiences that I am not going to abandon because I get some spam from a stranger.

The same day I got an email through LinkedIn from another stranger.

He acknowledged that we had been connected on LinkedIn for a number of years. Sorry I didn’t send you a Christmas card based on that intimacy.

He followed up to ask if I could connect him to a Fortune 500 Company where I knew a number of the Senior Executives.

What would compel me as a consultant to stop what I am doing and help somebody who is a stranger on payroll to connect them with people I have known and spent hours and hours building a relationship with? You don’t give away your connections so others can profit.

The next day I got an email from somebody that was part of a group that I respect, that I know has passed its prime.

The person admitted that they are turning over a new leaf for 2015 and networking. Then they send a long paragraph about them asking me to put their information in my data base if any future needs arise.

Is that Networking?

You see most New Business activities are worse than amiss. They are a total waste of time but they take less time than the task of developing relationships and then providing added value for those people.

I personally set up my New Business meetings for January a long time ago. You see when I was a puppy working in the biz at JWT Chicago I asked a client if I could make a call. He led me to an empty office with the usual abandoned office items. Old binders, boxes and dust.

There was one item on a cork board that I looked at while my call went through. It was a Marketing Plan for the coming year. It was dated August of the prior year. It had a very planning cycle but doesn’t New Business today require a very long runway?

Want New Business? Stop your nonsense and get a plan based on patience and persistent and not using other people to do your work for you.

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