Our next meeting is on Friday, Aug 6, 2010 at 8:45 am

Our free business networking group invites you to join us and share referrals. Our business blog offers you an opportunity to promote your own web site.

Members, please be advised that your $5 attendance fee is payable at the door.

NEW for VISITORS and PROVISIONAL MEMBERS only: attendance fee is $10 at the door, until you become regular members. To become a member of this group, please fill out this application form.

To make things easier for you and e-Spot staff, please consider paying $10 or $20 in advance. Your credit can then be used to cover your substitute’s fee, or will be carried over to your next meeting. Receipts will be issued by the e-Spot quarterly.

Boris Mahovac R.G.D.

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Are you attending trade shows, monthly association meetings & networking events to get new prospects? Business Development  costs money.
Do you have a plan in place and implemented, for staying in touch with the new prospects you meet?

If you are interested in learning more about how to follow up and maximize your investment, I offer several options.

2 hour sessions Follow up – Discover Your Next Step  and a session about taking action and implementing the follow up steps in your business Follow Up – Take Action. This session is about database set up, database maintenance and outbound cold calling.

Follow Up Training - Set The Stage For Follow Up and Automate Your Follow Up Process. Attend yourself and bring this business training for your office. You will learn how to build a Follow Up System that maximizes your business development investment and help get you past that 1st contact to the 2nd and beyond to the 5th contact where 80% of sales are made. You will save time, stayed organized and drive more traffic to your business!

Questions? No problem. Contact  Cheryl Scoffield, Follow Up Specialist.

You attended the networking meeting- Now What? Do you have a plan in place and implemented, for staying in touch with the new prospects you met at the networking event?    You will, after you attend Set The Stage For Follow Up Training Session.

This sales follow up training is best for: Business Managers, Small or Medium Sized Business Owners, Sales Professionals and Entrepreneurs.

The next “SET THE STAGE FOR FOLLOW UP”  Training Sessions  will be Monday night June 21st, and Monday night August 16th.
The training is 2.5 hours from 6 pm – 9 pm and takes place in Oakville, Ontario.

Register for “SET THE STAGE FOR FOLLOW UP”  Training or contact Cheryl at ExecutiveSalesSupport.com to arrange for this training to come to your office.

Learn the 10 Step Follow Up System through 2.5 hours of hands on, skills based training.  $89.00 in Oakville, Ontario.

At the “SET THE STAGE FOR FOLLOW UP”  Training you will discover the 10 step framework and the first 6 steps will be covered in depth. These first 6 follow up steps are critical because they establish your social connection to the people you meet. 

You will learn how to; 

1. Improve you ‘first contact’ conversation
2. Set the stage for future contacts
3. Increase the number of prospects you are in conversation with
4. Develop win win relationship building connections
5. Discover the ‘giving piece’ that pulls you forward from that first contact to the second and beyond

Register for “SET THE STAGE FOR FOLLOW UP”  Training  or contact Cheryl at ExecutiveSalesSupport.com to arrange for this training to come to your office.

Hear what attendees are saying about this skills based Follow Up Training; 

Cheryl is definitely the Follow Up Specialist! After taking her “Follow Up System” workshop and being introduced to the “10 Step Follow Up System,” I have a template to follow that will save time and increase my business.   Sue Lacher, Business Coach 

Cheryl is energentic and inspiring. In her “Set the Stage” training, Cheryl underscores the importance of following up with prospects and gives valuable input and ready-to-use strategies for overcoming that inherent reluctance to follow up past the first meeting. She also presents a very useful system for keeping track of your network.   Camilla Nielsen, Intellectual Property Consultant 

Our next meeting is on Friday, May 28, 2010 at 8:45 am

Our free business networking group invites you to join us and share referrals. Our business blog offers you an opportunity to promote your business on line.

Please be advised that from now on you must pay your $5 attendance fee at the door. To make things easier for you and e-Spot staff, please consider paying $10 or $20 in advance. Your credit can then be used to cover your substitute’s fee, or will be carried over to your next meeting. Receipts will be issued by the e-Spot quarterly.

Boris Mahovac R.G.D.

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But in the age of “Dress Down Friday” and Internet Frump, what’s appropriate to wear to work? At many companies, there are no carved-in-stone rules, so when in doubt, go traditional.

“The most basic mistake new employees make is underdressing,” says Randall Hansen, a professor of business at Stetson University in Deland, Fla. “If unsure, dress conservatively. The best way to avoid a problem is to understand the corporate culture.”

That’s a polite way of saying that a button-down company won’t appreciate your showing up for work in cutoffs and flip-flops, while a crunchy-granola outfit will think you’re nuts if you sit at your desk in a three-piece suit.

Making the right impression at work isn’t hard if you keep in mind three basic points when buying clothes for the office:

1. Presentation counts.
2. Casual shouldn’t mean slovenly.
3. Dress as you want to be seen: Serious, professional, upward-bound and ready to meet clients.

If your office has a written dress code, your problems are solved, and you can dress cookbook-style. If necessary, go shopping with the dress code in hand and pluck appropriate stuff from the rack. But many offices don’t have written standards, and it’s up to you to get it right. So, here’s a rule of thumb: Understated elegance beats flash and trash five days a week.

When starting a new job, remember that you’re being sized up all the time. Little things count. How you dress will tell the boss how you see yourself and how you approach the job. Some people, especially young workers, overlook this basic point, flub it and wonder why what seemed like a promising opportunity turned sour. (See ” Job Hunting Tips From Recruiters.”)

Rule of thumb: Always dress for the task at hand. If you’re a civil engineer headed for a construction site, jeans, a flannel shirt and work boots are fine, but that’s not how to dress when making a formal presentation to the grand pooh-bahs at the office. Believe it or not, otherwise intelligent people are remarkably dumb about this basic point.

Appearance can create credibility. You know this from your own experience watching TV food-fight shows focusing on politics and other chin-pulling topics. Think of the number of times experts from opposing sides of an issue have made good points during an exchange, but you remember what one said simply because that person was better dressed and came across better on screen.

Our next meeting is on Friday, April 30, 2010 at 8:45 am

Our free business networking group invites you to join us and share referrals. Our business blog offers you an opportunity to promote your own web site.

Please be advised that from now on you must pay your $5 attendance fee at the door. To make things easier for you and e-Spot staff, please consider paying $10 or $20 in advance. Your credit can then be used to cover your substitute’s fee, or will be carried over to your next meeting. Receipts will be issued by the e-Spot quarterly.

Boris Mahovac R.G.D.

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When you log in to your user account you will notice the new layout and styling immediately, with the main menu now running in the left column. If you haven’t used the blog yet, now it should be even easier to use.

Writing for this Blog
A reminder to those members who are yet to publish their first blog post, and those who have published only one or two, that your account level is Contributor, which means you are not able to publish directly to the blog, but have to submit your article for review first. This review is only technical in nature, so we’re not concerned with content or style, unless your article appears to be encroaching on other members’ field of expertise, in which case you will be advised to revise your article. Once you’ve published several articles (or you’re an experienced blogger running your own blog site) your account will be upgraded to Author level. This will also allow you to upload images and videos to accompany your blog posts. BTW, even at the Contributor level, you can always link to videos you posted to YouTube.

To our visitors the blog should look the same, except that now the List of Speakers article is “sticky” and will always be displayed first on the main blog index page.

Twitter
If you’re reading this post on our site (as compared to our RSS feed, or on our Linkedin group where your articles are automatically syndicated — one more reason for you to blog more for added exposure) you will notice another new feature: the Retweet button found in the upper right corner of each blog post. If you’re on Twitter, I’d recommend that you re-tweet this, and all other blog posts in an effort to promote individual members and our group as a whole to your Twitter followers. Also make sure you follow @OakvilleNetwork, too. I’ve recently created this account which will tweet automatically each time you post an article on our blog!

Here’s to your successful business blogging!

Boris Mahovac R.G.D.

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In a survey conducted about 10 months ago, results show that the top three problems facing entrepreneurs in Halton  were:

1. isolation,

2. lack of meeting space and

3. difficulty getting good referrals to get the best help for themselves and their businesses.

I personally know this to be true as a home-based entrepreneurial coach for the last 5 years.

Sitting in my home office certainly has its perks but boy, there were some unbearable days where I had to pack my files and laptop and GET OUT as I could not stand the loneliness of being at home anymore.  I also know that I frequented too many Starbucks stores to name (hence my slight, ok, major addiction to soy chai lattes) because I had no place to meet my clients.  On top of it all, I have had my share of feeling lost and making poor choices when it came to outsourcing for help because I didn’t know where to go for a good referral.

Any of these feel familiar?

Well, that’s why I created the e-Spotâ„¢…. a much-needed community for entrepreneurs.  I just knew that if I was surrounded by energetic, creative, entrepreneurial minds, had a flexible, fun yet professional space to work and have meetings in and could get the help I needed, all in one spot, I would grow as a person and by extension, so would my business.

As many of you have heard me talk about over the last few months, the e-Spotâ„¢ is a membership-based community for entrepreneurs for the Halton and Mississauga area, located at 353 Iroquois Shore Road in Oakville (just off Trafalgar, north of the QEW) on the 2nd floor.  We are in the midst of designing this unique space that is unlike anything in the vicinity complete with gorgeous interior brick, an exposed, loft-style ceiling, an energy bar, and the most dynamic staff you’ll meet – this 3000 square feet space calls out “creative, cool and competent” and will WOW you and your clients.

Opening in December 2009, we are already gaining lots of interest from a HUGE entrepreneurial community.  I am writing you today to invite you to come and find out all about this new community.

We are hosting a short information afternoon on Friday, November 13th from 1 – 2pm.  I’d love to meet you and give you an overview of the opportunity so you can see for yourself whether this would be a good match for you and your business.

The meeting will be held at the location of one of our neighbours, The Little Gym (for whom we are very grateful for offering us space while our space in under construction!). It is located at 355 Iroquois Shore Road, Unit 2B, in Oakville.  Please RSVP to our e-Spot™ Manager, Elaine Geroche at elaine@e-spot.ca or by calling 289-291-5304 by Wednesday, November 11th to secure a spot at this information event.

And please feel free to forward this to anyone you know who you think might be interested in coming.  In the meantime, you can check out our blogsite at www.e-spot.ca

We look forward to seeing you all there.

Warmly,
Grace Yvonne Attard, Creator of the e-Spotâ„¢

I came across this free to attend event and thought it would be great for other entrepreneurs and small business owners to attend. You can get an exhibitor table for $149.00 + GST.

Here is an excerpt from their website:

Third-annual Small Business Showcase: A Bridges to Better Business Event. Taking place at the Waterloo Inn Hotel on Wednesday October 7th, from 2pm—9pm, the Small Business Showcase features small businesses from Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge, Guelph and beyond!

FREE, sounds like a great deal to me! See you there!