Tina Gleisner

Where to Find Tina Gleisner

Blogging is a way of life, but at some point you have to decide which blogs are the ones you're going to focus on. I've got several blogs now and unfortunately, this one didn't make the cut. Don't fret as my focus on marketing simply has a new home. Here's where you can follow me:

• Home Tips 4 Women, a blogsite where I write quite a bit and will soon be joined by members of the Association of Women Home Owners
• Marketing Solutions 4 Home Professionals, a blogsite (under development) where I share marketing tips (including those found here) and will soon be joined by marketing professionals who join the Association of Women Home Owners
• Handyman Nuts & Bolts, where I started a blog devoted to handyman type information, plus fun stuff going on in my life

You can also find me on various Social Networking sites:

ActiveRain (activerain.com/tinag), a community of 150,000+ Realtors and other professionals involved in real estate

LinkedIn, ... several different ways to connect there:

• My personal profile, www.linkedin.com/in/tinagleisner
• Group for home owners: Association of Women Home Owners
• Group for home professionals: Home Pros @ Assn of Women Home Owners

Facebook, several different ways to connect there:

• Personal profile: www.facebook.com/tinagleisner
• Fan page: www.facebook.com/HomeTips4Women
• Fan page: www.facebook.com/MarketingTips4Pros
• Fan page: www.facebook.com/HandymanTips4You

Twitter, where I decided one account was enough ... twitter.com/tinagleisner

Cultural Shifts Affecting Our Lives

Each of us tends to focus on the 2 or 3 most important things affecting our lives, be they personal or professional in nature. It helps to step back from your day-to-day activities, to see the big picture and one I find very challenging is the changing nature of the people around me.

Be they friends, employees or customers ... their social character is different from mine. When you're with these people every day, you can learn the difference more easily than when you're running a small business with short, intermittent interactions with 10s to 100s of people each month.

Pepperdine's (where I got my MBA) newsletter had 2 fascinating articles which I've included excepts from with links to full text. The world is changing, and I hope we're up to making personal changes to keep up.

• The Trybaby Syndrome by Charles D. Kerns, PhD

Trybabies focus on tasks and actions they can do well, but that have little or no relation to their success within an organization. This article identifies the Trybaby Syndrome as a performance challenge and introduces a "Performance Influence - Importance Matrix" to help managers identify the differences between so-called Trybabies, Spinners, Pass-Timers, and Corperformers.

• The Leaders We Need: And What Makes Us Follow by Michael Maccoby ... a book review

... the industrial age was rooted in a domestic model of the traditional family with a father as principal breadwinner and authority figure. This model privileged disciplined, bureaucratic leaders who set clear goals. Business was structured hierarchically with a well-defined pecking order where everybody took orders from the person above and gave them to the one below. The highest value was stability. That model faded in the 1970s.  

The 1980s privileged "The Gamesman," a politically savvy leader who treated work as a game to win. Corporations downsized and people worked "at will." The social character was team-based with short-term objectives and a focus on transferable skills.

Maccoby calls the new millennial interactives. Raised on twitch-and-click video games, their relationships are fluid and diverse. They are optimists raised to regard parents as "friends" with whom they align laterally as with siblings, creating an affectionate bond tempered by a freedom to critique. They want to collaborate with their leaders for the "common good" and are happy doing so in a virtual sphere.

 

Women's Networking in NH - How Many Groups?

Here I sit trying to sort out 2 women's groups in NH that I'm not very familiar with, and honestly it's a struggle understanding them all. The good news is, we've got so many choices ... and they're all becoming much more active in helping their members showcase their businesses. The challenge though, is sorting out which ones to join (in addition to your professional and local business groups like the chamber) and even then, you still need to decide which meetings to attend.

I decided to start the list of groups, at least those I'm aware of. PLEASE everyone, help me complete the list with any groups you know and I've missed.

• 4 Walls 1 Roof, Bedford - 1st Thur, breakfast
• 4 Walls 1 Roof, Portsmouth - 3rd Wed, dinner
• Business & Professional Women (BPW), Nashua - 3rd Thur, lunch
  
  • Have heard there are BPW groups in Londonderry and Haverill, MA
• eWomen Network, Portsmouth - 3rd Thur, dinner
• New England Women's Network, Manchester area - 3rd Thur lunch (Pam Oliwa) 
• New Girls Network (Sherrill StGermain)
• Seacoast Women's Network (SWN), Portsmouth - 3rd Tues, dinner
• Southern NH Women's Business Network, various evenings & locations (Manchester area)
• Women's Business Center (WBC), based in Portsmouth, multiple meetings across southern NH
• Women Inspiring Women, maybe 2nd Thu, dinner
• Women's Rural Entrepreneurial Network (WREN), multiple meetings across northern NH

Would love to hear from everyone about the following:

• Would you like to create a shared Women in NH calendar where we could put all of our events to help with scheduling?
• Should we consider opening up our various business showcase events to members of other women's groups, as we're all trying to support women owned businesses?
• What other ideas do you have for collaborating across multiple womens groups in NH?

Everyone can simply add their comments below, and that way we can all participate in the conversation. Thanks everyone

Getting Heard Among the 100,000s Marketing Merssages

Just had to share these numbers with you ... as they're huge, scary and representative of the challenge every small business owner faces each day. Thanks to Lani and Allen Volvod for sharing on their blog.

The average person today is exposed to:

• 3,500 marketing messages a day!
• 24,000 messages A WEEK!
• 1.7 million a year and climbing!!
• Barnes and Noble bookstores have over 130,000 titles to choose from.
• Grocery stores have over 30,000 choices vying for your attention.
• Walgreens has a measly 15,000 choices and they’re doing okay.

Everyone is competing for ATTENTION. But check so it's important to remember that people buy from:

• Those they know, like and trust
• They don't buy because of clever slogans or graphics
• They don't buy because you say you’re the best
• They don’t buy because you have a truly great product

They buy because you have the answer to making them richer, happier, or better looking. They buy from you, because YOU are the SOLUTION to a problem they want fixed!

Treat Customers Like People

I volunteered at our local Habitat for Humanity event last weekend. With my husband leading the International Sidewalk Astronomy night in Portsmouth, I went to the fund raiser as a guest and volunteer. Working at checkout, most people gave me their auction bid number. I explained that we value them as the generous people they are, and I preferred to learn their names. Most smiled and introduced themselves.

In our hectic lives, I find it sad that we accept being identified by number, to feed the many systems we deal with each day. Life is about people, about the relationships we have with family, friends, co-workers and acquaintances in the communities where we live. As technology becomes more prevalent in our lives, we have to work to maintain a balance between systems that save us time and relationships that re-charge our emotional batteries.

I wondered what others were saying on-line about this problem, and so I borrow from another blog on Treating Your Readers Like Human Beings, Not Numbers (scary that I've got a url, but couldn't find the authors name). The original post focused on blogging, but I've personalized this to all types of communication on-line and off-line.

In real life there is a hierarchy within the community of people we interact with. These roles may change over time based on the actions of one/both people ... but we are forever, all human beings and should be treated accordingly. Successful relationships, be they on-line or face-2-face, require that you consider each individual and your relationship with them. You want people to feel like your friend, and where the opportunity presents itself, you want to move people higher up the hierarchy.

1. Mentors - are people we look up to because of their expertise in some area. Mentors are people willing to share their expertise with others, such as Gail Zona, Next Step Business Strategies, who teaches classes through NH's Women's Business Center.
• For these people, you want to roll out the red carpet.
2. Friends - are people we work with in co-operative initiatives to create win-win solutions for all participants like Gayle Sanders, GRS Home Design, who is helping me build 4 Walls 1 Roof.
• I appreciate these people and find ways to show that appreciation.
3. Partners - are people who don't always share interests or preferences but work together for mutual benefit, so translating into my small business ... these people are my suppliers.
• I am respectful but I don’t say yes just to be friendly.
4. Colleagues - are people doing the same/similar work or ... work in the same company/community. As owner of My Handyman, they include business owners/professionals involved in construction, real estate and the business community in southern NH.
• I am polite and helpful.
5. Acquaintances - are people I encounter occasionally at networking events but don't interact with to any extent.
• I say hello to these people.
6. Guests - are people who might visit my business, my home or interestingly, one of my web sites or ... we might chat on-line without ever meeting.
7. Clients - are people I know only through work, typically because we have a monetary relationship (which may be true of some people above, but that is not our primary relationship.)
• I will try to make eye contact and smile.
8. Casual Visitors - are people who might casually view your web site or blog, but won’t talk to you, they are just there.
• I ask “how can I help you?”
9. Strangers - are people you won’t ever notice. They might see you on a Google search results page and not even click through to your web site.
• You may ignore them or not.

Setting Goals You Can Achieve

I've always been goal oriented, which is sometimes good & sometimes not so good. I've accomplished a lot,  but maybe my satisfaction was lacking when I didn't quite reach the goal set. I'm a new member of Active Rain, a blogging community for those involved in real estate, and there was an incredibly good post today about setting goals that are within your control, that will lead to your ultimate business goals.

First before I forget, let me give credit for this to Jennifer Allan, author of Sell with Soul. It was Jennifer's blog on Production Quotas that inspired me to translate the achievable goals into ones I can use. I am modifying the goals as I'm not a realtor so some don't make sense.

Jennifer described her goals by quarter which makes sense. Life happens and you'll set weekly goals, some weeks other priorities will preempt your time. Remember to set goals you can achieve, goals that will give you personal satisfaction for a job well done, and encouragement to keep going.

I originally planned to modify Jennifer's "realtor goals" but that's a bigger challenge than I realized so for now, I've just added comments to help me start tweaking these goals for small business owners.

By the end of March:

• Adding 40 people to your Sphere of Influence (SOI)
• 100 homes previewed
• 3 new home neighborhoods visited
• ...2 goals above are about research to build your territory
• 15 lunch dates
• 25 "outings"
• ...I've sent an email to Jennifer as I'm not sure what an outing is
• 5 open houses
• 3 SOI e‑mails sent out
• ...My monthly newsletter but maybe I can do this better if I think about SOI?
  
• 1 mailing that included your business card
• 1 continuing education class ...for business owners, a seminar or book
  
• 50 thank you cards sent

By the end of June:

• 80 names added to your SOI
• 200 homes previewed
• 6 new home neighborhoods visited
• 30 lunch dates
• 50 "outings"
• 10 open houses
• 6 SOI e‑mails sent out
• 2 mailings that included your business card
• 3 continuing education classes
• 100 thank you cards sent
• 1 dinner party for friends

By the end of December:

• 140 names added to your SOI
• 400 homes previewed
• 10 new home neighborhoods visited
• 60 lunch dates
• 100 "outings"
• 20 open houses
• 10 SOI e‑mails sent out
• Your two mailings plus an end‑of‑year mailing (calendar, newsletter, holiday card, etc.)
• 6 continuing education classes
• 200 thank you cards sent
• 2 dinner parties for friends
• 1 housewarming party for a client

These goals are all completely doable and 100% within your control. If you meet these goals, you will have consistent business, no question.

What Online Marketing Looks Like

More than 80% of the people buying a home use the web sometime during their search. An article I read on this topic also said only 62% of Americans have computers at home? That tells me they believe the web is key to making smart real estate decisions, and they have ready access to computers at work, libraries, etc.

The web is exploding! Even though I consider myself running with the pack, with respect to my websites (www.MyHandymanNH.com and www.4walls1roof.com) and newsletters (Handyman News and 4 Walls 4 You!), I'm quickly realizing that I've only just begun to tap into what's known collectively as "social media."

Turns out many of our peers, not just our children on Facebook and YouTube, are starting to communicate online through a wide range of web sites, software and the like. Here is a great visual that can explain the explosion better than any words. Credit for this picture goes to ActiveRain and one of their 80,000 members, Michael Leznik in LA. If you're using something not shown, please share it via a comment below.

                                 

Bagel Marketing for Hungry People

With all the focus on marketing online, it's also important not to forget about face-to-face marketing as ultimately that is how strong relationships develop. I found this blog post on Active Rain, a successful real estate network which I'm exploring.  As a confirmed bagel lover, I simply couldn't resist sharing. Thanks to Audrey June- Forshey, a realtor in Gaithersburg MD, for sharing this story.

This is not web based marketing, this was good old belly to belly stuff!

Another agent and I would go on Wednesday mornings to the local bagel shop, buy bags of bagels with different cream cheeses.  We would drop these bags of bagels (about 20 to 30 in a bag) off at different local business in our area once a week.  We would leave our business cards, magnets, brochures, contact information, and the like with the bagels for the employees to read.  It took a bit of effort, but it really paid off.

We did this for about 3 months and go leads from it.  We still get business from those bagels.  They were always waiting for us on Wednesdays to come with the bagels.  The bagel company gave us a discount because we were such regulars and bought  a lot of bagels.

We have since changed our format with these companies.  We now mail gift cards, movie tickets and occasionally drop off bagels.  The bagels were a way for us to get into the door and get to know the folks, who is going to turn away free food?  This let us get them in our database and build relationships.

The Power of Pink

Sometimes life gets too complicated and you have to make time for a little fun. It started about 2 weeks ago when Tomboy Tools announced a pink hammer special promotion. Later that day my friend and fantastic networker, Deb Sarhanis, called to check in with me. A half hour later we had planned our very first  Pink Pajama Party!

So what exactly is a Pink Pajama Party? It's simply a Friday night get together for women to relax with old friends, make new friends, eat healthy (and not so healthy) food and have a great time. The "pajama" part means wear comfy clothing which might be jeans, sweats or whatever you define as comfy (I couldn't resist these super girl pajamas.

The "pink" part is the fund raising to sell a 100 "Hammer Out Breast Cancer" hammers. They even say  Hammer out Breast Cancer on the hammers , so if you know someone who's been affected by this sad disease, here's a fun way to help find a cure. $3 is donated to Susan Komen foundation for every hammer sold ($14.95 for one hammer, March 2008 special is 2 for the price of 1 hammer plus shipping). 5% goes to www.breastcancerstories.com, as each quarter I donate 5% of all Tomboy Tools sales to a local non-profit organization that helps women.

So if you want more details about the party (Friday, April 4) in Hampton, NH or you want to support a good cause and buy some pink hammers, just email Tina, tinag@pobox.com

                                                   

The Profit of Color!

I've been busy as January was the first month I published two eNewsletters. While I've been writing Handyman News for a year and a half, this was my first 4 Walls newsletter, 4 Walls 4 You! What's really exciting for me is the opportunity to transform 4 Walls 1 Roof from an informal co-marketing group of women owned businesses & professionals providing products and services to Create, Maintain and Enhance the home ... into a marketing services company where I'll provide a full range of marketing services for 4 Walls members.

The first issue of 4 Walls 4 You! focused on color to celebrate the grand opening of a new paint store, Exeter Paint West. Nicole Durant, the owner of Exeter Paint and Exeter Paint West, is an amazing individual and member of 4 Walls. Several members joined Nicole for her grand opening and others contributed to the newsletter where our breadth of membership from paint (the material), to painters who can do everything from standard painting to faux painting and murals, wall paper (Jen Croteau) plus our great team of decorators begins to highlight the strength of 4 Walls offering a full menu of products and services to enhance the home.

So how important is color? Beautiful Living's newsletter offered an article from the Color Marketing Group which offers some insight into the answer. Consider these powerful facts from different marketing studies and if you want to learn more, read the full article ... The Profit of Color!

• Color increases brand recognition by up to 80 percent
• Color improves readership as much as 40 percent
• Color accelerates learning from 55 to 78 percent
• Color increases comprehension by 73 percent
• Color ads are read up to 42 percent more than similar ads in black and white
• Color can be up to 85 percent of the reason people decide to buy

Please share (easy to add comments) your experience using (or not) color.