Pack Like a pro

I wish so much that I didn't already know much of the tips below.  I just booked two trips today and have the following on the agenda for the rest of the year.  Toronto x2 at least, Calgary x2 at least, Vancouver, Chicago x4 at least, Monterrey Mexico x2, Germany, Seattle x2, Dallas x2, Philly x2, Charleston, etc etc.  Crazzzzy - That on top of a trip to my office in Baton Rouge every 4-6 weeks makes for a hectic year.

Knowing the ins and outs of airports, airlines, hotels, and how to pack are critical.  I have the same packing procedure and unpacking in hotels I have used for close to 20 yrs.  Don't have OCD in many other parts of my life but traveling i have my routines!

My lovely wife says "why can you pack in 10 minutes in 1 bag for a 5 day trip and it takes me hours and 2 or 3 bags" - the simple answer is no matter how much I pack or how long I take I will never look as beautiful as the lovely Mrs. Brown. Schedules like above make you good at prepping!
Travel Safe my friends!

Business Travel- Pack Like a Pro

Business Travel

Pack Like a Pro

Rich Karlgaard, 02.09.11, 06:00 PM EST http://ow.ly/45cCX
Forbes Magazine dated February 28, 2011

Business travelers have this in common with pro athletes: They must learn to play hurt.

Business travelers have this in common with pro athletes: They must learn to play hurt. Can't play hurt, you're not a pro. Here's a test: Can you deliver a keynote speech or one of those bet-your-job client presentations at 3 a.m. (on your body clock) on four hours of sleep while battling a cold, a hangover, a dislocated back, dry mouth--in a room that feels too hot, the lights too bright?

If you can't, you're strictly an amateur.

Road warriors must prepare themselves for the worst. Assume that you will catch the flu on the first day of a ten-day business trip. That you will have too little sleep. That your bad back will flare up on a crummy hotel bed. That you will have diarrhea or it's opposite. That the stage lights will give you flop sweat or a migraine. That your audience will be bored, even hostile.

How will you cope?

Accepting the inevitability of occasional disaster is half the battle. A prepared mind removes the panic. The other half is bringing the right weapons. As a 200,000-mile-a-year traveler, I never leave home without the following pills and potions. All are over the counter.

To sleep: melatonin and valerian.

To wake up: green-tea pills, five-hour energy bottle.

Hangover cure: cocktail of water, Gatorade, Red Bull and Alka-Seltzer.

Focus booster for the big speech: 12-hour Claritin-D, gingko

For everyday health: multivitamin, omega-3, lots of water.

For bad back, muscle sprains, migraine: ibuprofen, roll of KT tape.

To stop a cold or flu: immune-system booster such as Wellness from Source Naturals, bag of salt so that you can gargle with salt water.

For digestive health: colon cleanser, Pepto-Bismol tablets.

To prevent flop sweat: Mitchum cream antiperspirant. Dab some cream on your forehead and neck the night before. Wash it off during your morning shower. You won't sweat, even in a hot room.

To prevent blisters or chapped lips: tube of Carmex.

To look well dressed:Wear only dark suits made of hard worsted wool, tailored or made-to-measure. Buy four pairs of pants with the suit. For a five-day, four-city trip, it is better to take one good dark suit with four pairs of pants than two average suits that will look rumpled by week's end.

To avoid gaining weight: Eat a high-bran, high-protein, low-sugar breakfast. If the hotel has free apples, take two. Don't eat the nuts on the airplane. Never eat between meals. Never eat cocktail party snacks. If you drink, drink "white" booze like vodka and white wine. Eat two-thirds of the dinner served to you. Eat one-third of the dessert.

Good Interview for English Beat fans like me....

If you were in high school or uni in early 80s you'll like this!

Procrastinating some work and listening to old english beat acoustic!

Dave Wakling- old fav this time acoustic -need to wait through some foody stuff to get to it!

Mar Yvette's Weekend Roundup on GDLA: MyFoxLA.com

50 Must-Have Small Business iPhone and iPad Apps

February 20, 2011 Small Buiness Trends By Shara Karsic http://ow.ly/42LcP


1. Travel for Business Like a True Road Warrior

Prepare for your trip and navigate like a true road warrior using your iPhone! Kayak PROlets you find a flight or a hotel; TripIt – Travel Organizer keeps your travel itinerary always handy in your pocket,; FlightTrack Pro – Live Flight Status Tracker gives you real-time flight updates and helps you find alternate flights (and works seamlessly with TripIt); GateGuruwill guide you to the nearest ATM, post office, or luggage store in the airport. Once you arrive, Taxi! makes it easy to find a cab 24/7 anywhere in the U.S. Don’t forget your Kindleapp so you can read on the plane or in the taxi.

2. Business Communications that Join Virtual Teams

Make free phone calls with Viber, Truphone, or Skype, which has entered 2011 with the ability to make video calls over both Wi-Fi and 3G. Stay connected to your team with Free Conference Call, which lets you hold conferences and even offers free recording. Or tryCallvine, with one-click group calls, or Calliflower, which displays a dashboard of conference participants. Send group text messages for free with Beluga. Join online meetings via your iPhone with Cisco WebEx Meeting Center. If you have an iPad, you can attend online meetings with WebEx for iPad or GoToMeeting.

3. Payment Processing Wherever Your Customers Are

Whether you are selling at a swap meet, garage sale, or art gallery, accept credit card payments right from your iPhone with Square or  Intuit GoPayment Credit Card Terminal.

4. Expenses Tracked on the Go

Scan your receipts on the go to make generating expense reports a snap with Shoeboxed Receipt Tracker and Receipt Reader.  Or use Expensify, which imports your credit card’s purchase history and automatically creates expense reports which it emails from your iPhone.

5. Business Networking for Super Connectors

Be prepared to work a room and cultivate new contacts. Use LinkedIn to check out new connections, card reader app WorldCard Mobile to scan business cards and CardManager to manage them. Or just use Bump to exchange contact info. Gist creates rich business profiles of people you meet, and Calvetica Calendar lets you easily schedule events with them.  Once you have new contacts in your iPhone, use Dialvetica to access them quickly.

6. Document Access & Management Across Platforms

View and edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint docs wherever you are with Documents To Go – Office Suite or QuickOffice Connect. Share files across computers and mobile devices withDropbox. Access your desktop remotely with Wyse PocketCloud Pro – RDP / VNC / View (Remote Desktop) or Mocha VNC. Scan with Genius Scan and print documents from your iPhone or iPad with PrinterShare.

SEE THE REST AT THE LINK ABOVE- 

Kevin L. Brown www.kbsinsight.blogspot.com 

The Future Of Selling: It's Social

The Future Of Selling: It's Social
Brian Fetherstonhaugh, 12.03.10, 11:18 AM ET --Forbes.com http://ow.ly/41eDB

In the era of Facebook, Google, Twitter and Yelp, buyers have as much control over the flow of information as salespeople. Buying, once a one-way interaction between an informed seller and a curious buyer, has become a conversation between equals, and the revolution in buying behavior is still ongoing.

To find out just what was changing, and why, OgilvyOne did research among 1,000 sales professionals in the U.S., U.K., Brazil and China.

What we learned: Social media has had an enormous impact on buying behavior with 49% of sellers seeing social media as important to their success. In fact, among the most successful salespeople, over two-thirds believe social media is integral to their sales success.

But companies are not adapting fast enough. Sixty-eight percent of sales professionals say they believed that the selling process is changing faster than their own organizations are adapting to it. Companies are not providing solid training to sales professionals in social media. In fact, many are actively discouraging the use of social media despite the fact that customers are buying that way. Nearly half of sales professionals surveyed believe their companies are afraid of letting employees use social media.

Many U.S. companies claim to have a social media strategy, but only 9% of U.S. salespeople say their company trains or educates them on the use of social media for sales. This stands in stark contrast to Brazil where 25% of salespeople surveyed receive training on social media usage. Thirty-eight percent of the salespeople we surveyed in China use personal blogs in their selling process while only 3% of U.S. salespeople do the same.

If salespeople are to continue providing solutions to their customers, selling must evolve in lockstep with buying. There are several significant initiatives that salespeople can adopt in order to remain the ideal partner to an interested customer. The one thing that unites all of these new ideas is the centrality of the customer. This new world of distributed information doesn't loosen the focus on the buyer. If anything, it sharpens it.

1. New Buyer Journeys Customers create their own buyer journeys. They take many steps without the seller's involvement, and they may not always start at step one. A tremendous amount of action happens after the sale, especially when customers experience the brand and then share their experiences with others. Sometimes they talk with a few friends and family, or perhaps they will self-cast their thoughts to hundreds, thousands or millions of others through social media. Salespeople need to find out exactly where their customers are in their journey right now and advise them on the best way to get there.

2. A New Role for Content: Digital Bait In a disintermediated media world, customers are eager for professionally produced content, and we can use that desire to draw customers to our messages by creating digital bait. There are three main kinds:

--Beliefs and Points of View - Put out what your company believes and what it stands for. Not everybody will like it, but it will attract the kind of prospects already aligned with what you have to sell.

--Expertise - Customers and prospects are hungry for high-quality expert information. They want to be smart shoppers and be informed. They appreciate factual expert opinions about the category and about you. They will generate this information regardless, and you would be well served by having a hand in creating their narrative.

--Invitations and Offers - You need to extend appealing invitations and offers to make it easy for people to engage.

3. New Listening Skills: Digital Footprints
Customers and prospects are throwing off billions of digital buying indications every day. They signal their intentions through the search keywords they use, the blogs they read, the whitepapers they download, and the shopping baskets they fill.

They are leaving digital footprints for the savvy hunter to observe and act upon. IBM, for example, used digital traces to create sales leads for their software group. They studied the exact language that IT buyers used in their searches about software topics and then custom designed a whole raft of inexpensive "how to" videos around these topics. IBM posted them on YouTube and tagged them with exactly the same words that buyers use when they search.

4. New Marketing Skills: Behavioral Economics Behavioral economics studies why and how consumers make choices as well as the economic impact those choices have. It combines the rational and the emotional side of buying decisions into one view and can produce some surprising insights:

--Creating a default option is one of the most effective ways to make a sale. With out one, human inertia stands in the way of selling.
--Sometimes, increasing the price will increase volume, not reduce it.
--And in another counterintuitive example, adding more choices will often result in fewer yeses, not more.

5. A New Way to Sell: Social Selling Selling is, now more than ever, a social enterprise. Great salespeople use all their allies to propel customers along the new buyer journeys to close a sale.

To launch the new 2010 Explorer, Ford created a community of advocates and enthusiasts on line. They shared their plans for the new model, previewed the car, and gave their fans first dibs on seeing and test driving the new model. They looped in dealers in 11 major cities, getting them excited about the new vehicle and ready to take pre-orders. Ford can boast of 10,000 pre-orders, eclipsing expectations.

6. A New Partnership: Selling is a Team Sport Just as sellers are collaborating with buyers in new ways, sales and marketing need a new arrangement. But who should lead and who should follow? Should marketing join sales in having a quota? Regardless of the uncertainties, one thing is clear: Successful selling requires new and deeper collaboration.

---

Great salespeople use all their allies to propel customers along the journey and close a sale. Sales collaborates with marketing; sales uses social media to create momentum; sales works with customers to create solutions.

Your 30-Day Plan
Now, let us leave you with five things you can do in the next 30 days.

1. Walk in the Buyers footprints.
--Write down the exact journey you followed to make the last three big purchases in your personal life.
--What role did a live salesperson play?
--What role did the media play, including search and social media?
--Do the same for your business. Talk to the last three people who bought from you. Exactly how did they buy? --Write it down. Draw the journey.
--Do you have an arsenal of great offers and a systematic way to personalize them?

2. Use digital bait.
--Can you do a compelling 2-minute you Tube video?
--Do you tell people what you stand for?
--Are you providing true expertise and category insights for your buyers and helping them make good choices?

3. Sell something using social media. Maybe it's something simple like an upcoming event or more complicated like a new product. The important thing is to try it and then to measure it.

4. Get Marketing and Sales in the same room. Take half a day and share a heart to heart session.
--Are you on the same page?
--What more can marketing do for sales?
--What more can sales do for Marketing?
--How can you turn the tennis opponents into a winning basketball team?

5. Join the new selling conversation.
This is the most important time in the history of marketing and sales. Buying has changed dramatically, and we as sellers have fallen behind so far. But our customers want us to catch up. They depend on us, especially as they try to navigate a confusing new world awash in more information than they can handle.

Brian Fetherstonhaugh is chairman and CEO of OgilvyOne Worldwide.
Kevin L. Brown www.kbsinsight.blogspot.com 

Corkage Etiquette in Restaurants - What to know when you want to BYO

Margaret Raber - http://ow.ly/40S1s

Posted: February 17, 2011

Certain etiquette questions arise when you’re faced with a restaurant’s BYOB or corkage policy: Do you call ahead? Offer a sip to the sommelier? Francesco Grosso, who has been wine director at Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence-winning restaurant Marea in New York since its opening, in 2009, offers the dos and don’ts of bringing your own.

Wine Spectator: How often do clients bring their own wine into Marea, and what type of customers—members of the industry, collectors, general patrons—are doing it? Francesco Grosso: I see a bottle brought in at least every other night. I would say it’s 90 percent collectors. We get the odd person who thought it would be a good idea to stop at the liquor store and buy something, and then they come in and find it’s a $50 fee to open said bottle; the fee dissuades people from bringing in things like that.

WS: What are some of the key points of corkage etiquette when bringing wine into a restaurant? FG: Well, I don’t think there are steadfast rules, but there are definitely things that are appreciated. Our rule used to be one bottle per table, but now it’s two, just because so many collectors are coming in, and I don’t want to stop them from bringing their wonderful bottles. As far as etiquette, I really appreciate when if someone brings in an older bottle of Bordeaux, they will start with a white Burgundy or a bottle of Champagne from our list. I hesitate to call that etiquette, it’s just appreciated.

WS: Is it important for people to call a restaurant before showing up with a bottle? FG: In certain cases, yes—if they are not familiar with the policy and call to ask, or if it’s a larger group and they want to bring in something that exceeds the policy. Calling ahead is something I would say is definitely etiquette.

WS: Do you feel that it is inappropriate to bring a wine that is on the restaurant’s current wine list? FG: I do. I think that, if the wine is on the list, it should not be brought in. I have worked at restaurants where that was the case; we wouldn’t open bottles that were on the list. But, since Marea’s list unfortunately is not online at present, there is no way for someone to find out [if their selected wine is on the list] before they get here, other than me faxing or e-mailing them the list right now. So I will open anything.

WS: Do people usually offer you a taste of what they bring? FG: Certainly, it happens, nine times out of 10, but I do not consider it something necessary. It is very nice and appreciated, but not expected.

WS: What are some of your pet peeves on corkage? FG: If it is your bottle, it is my responsibility to serve it correctly, but the temperature of the bottle is something that is kind of a slippery slope. People bring in wines (that should be cellared) at extremely warm temperatures and then get a bit angry at the temperature that they brought it in. I’ll do everything in my power to do something, but to take an older bottle of Bordeaux that comes into the restaurant hot and shock it in ice? I feel like I’m almost adding to the problem with the bottle being stored at improper temperatures and then shocking it in cold water.

WS: Do you find that people have a negative reaction to you if the wine they brought in is faulty or disappointing? FG: Yes. I have collectors that dine here often that look to me for my opinion on their wines, but it’s something that I do not offer if I don’t know the guest. In fact, often a guest that I am not familiar with will ask, “Did you taste this?” and, while I do taste and make sure that every bottle that I serve from our cellar is sound, that is not something that I feel comfortable doing with someone else’s bottle. I’m here to open it for you, provide you with the proper glassware and serve you the wine as I would any other wine. That is what the $50 charge is for; it’s not my responsibility to give you an opinion on the soundness of the bottle unless it is asked.

WS: Any final comments on bringing your own wine to restaurants? FG: I think there would be a lot more etiquette for something that was done for free. I don’t think there is anything that I would ask of the guest beyond common courtesy and just understand the outside factors of the bottle.

Kevin Brown www.kbsinsight.blogspot.com 

Selling Commodities-Perceived Value and Differentiation

Selling Commodities

Copyright 2011, by Dave Kahle.   http://ow.ly/40oMx

"How do you create a perceived value to differentiate yourself from the competition, when you are both selling a commodity?" 

That's a question I'm often asked in my seminars. It uncovers a problem that is spreading to almost every industry. The rapid pace of technological development and our ultra-competitive global economy means that no one can keep a competitive edge in their product for very long. Develop a hot new product or service, and before you can take your first check to the bank, a competitor has a hotter or cheaper version. As a result, customers are more and more inclined to view your product or service as a commodity - no real difference between you and the next guy.

This complicates life for the salesperson. In some cases, you are selling exactly the same thing as your competitor. I spent a number of years selling for a distributor who sold, for the most part, exactly the same products as four or five competitors. Many of my clients work in this arena. Lumber distributors (a piece of lumber is a piece of lumber), industrial fasteners (a screw is a screw is a screw), petroleum (87 octane gasoline is 87 octane gasoline) etc. The list goes on and on.

In other cases, your product may not be exactly the same, but the customer views your product as a commodity with no real differences between what you sell and what your competitor offers. How much real difference is there between Coke and Pepsi after all?

Regardless of the situation in which you find yourself, the problem for the salesperson is the same - getting the business in the face of the customer’s perception of your "me too" product or service.

So, what do you do? This. To put it simply, you must detail and communicate the important ways your offering differs from your competitors.

That's easier said then done. To do so effectively, you need to spend some time thinking and preparing. And that means that you must carefully consider the two most important elements of the sale - your offering, and your customer. In this column, we're going to focus on one part of that equation - your offering.

Granted, your product may be exactly the same as the competition, but the totality of your offering may be dramatically different. I use the word "offering" to indicate every aspect of the purchasing decision - not just the product. For example, the customer buys the product from a company - yours or the other guys. The customer buys it from a salesperson - you or the competitor. Your company and you are part of the "offering." In addition, there may be differences in your terms, delivery, your customer-service capabilities, your follow-up, your return policy, your value-added services, etc. All of these are part of your "offering."

The product may be identical, but everything else about your offering may be different. For example, let's say you are contemplating purchasing a new Taurus. You have identical price quotes from two dealers. The product is the same, and the price is the same. However, one dealer is close by, the other across town. One dealer has a reputation for great customer service; the other has no such reputation. The salesperson for the first dealer is the brother of an old high-school friend, while the salesperson for the second dealer is a bit cocky and pushy. The first dealer has a clean, comfortable establishment, while the second one is cramped, cluttered and dirty.

From whom do you buy your Taurus? Stupid question. Of course you buy it from the first dealer. Not because of any differences in the product or the price, but because of differences in the offering. Got the idea? There is a whole lot more to a decision to buy then just the product or the price.

Your first job is to identify those differences. Here are some very specific steps you can take today.

ONE:    Think about everything that is associated with the product when a customer purchases it. Create several categories, and label columns on a piece of paper with the names of those categories. For example, the first column could be headed with the word "company," the second with the word "salesperson," the third with "terms." Continue in this way, identifying every aspect of the offering and placing each of those components at the top of a column.

TWO:    Now, consider each column one at a time, and list all the ways that your offering differs from your competitor's in that column. For example, your company may be locally owned as opposed to your competitor's branch of a national company. Or you may be physically closer to the customer, or larger, smaller, newer, older, etc. After you've exhausted one column, move onto the others, filling in the details as you go.

THREE:    This exercise will typically reveal dozens (and in some cases hundreds,) of specific, detailed differences. Far too many than you can easily communicate to the customer. So, your next step is to pick out those differences that are most important to your customer. Keep in mind that often what you see as important may not be viewed that way by your customers.

At one point in my career, I worked for a company that celebrated its 100^th year anniversary. That was unusual. No other competitors had been in business nearly that long. The company decided to make a big deal about it. A history of the company was written, brochures printed, even murals depicting significant moments in the company's history were painted on the walls of the corporate office. We all thought it was important.

Our customers, however, didn't care. After respectfully listening to our boasting, their response was some form of "So what?" In other words, our 100 years didn't mean anything to them. In no way did it make their jobs easier, simplify their lives, or make them more important to their companies. What we thought was important turned out to be irrelevant from our customers´ perspective.

Don't make the mistake we made. Instead, take the time to critically analyze your list, and eliminate those items that are not important to your customer, that don't impact their jobs or make a difference to them. You should be left with a handful of items.

FOUR:    One more step to the preparation. Translate each of those items into statements of benefit to the customer. For example, your company may be local, while your competitor ships from 50 miles away. So what? What does that mean to your customer? You could translate that item of difference into a benefit by saying something like this: "As opposed to some other suppliers, we're just 15 minutes from your plant. This means that you can get quick delivery of emergency shipments, as well as rapid response to any problem that might develop. So, you'll have potentially less downtime in the plant, and of course, less stress and pressure on you."

Now that you've professionally prepared, you are ready to communicate those differences to your customer. You need to point them out in an organized and persuasive presentation.

Prepare a sell sheet with each of the differences noted as a bullet. Next to each bullet, have a few comments that capsulize the benefit statements you prepared. Then, meet with your customer, lay the sheet down in front of him/her, and talk down through it, explaining each point as you go.

Treat it like you would any other well-done presentation. Be sensitive to your customer’s reaction, and ask for feedback as you work down through the list. Say, "How does that sound?" or "Does that make sense to you?"and emphasize those things that seem to be more important to your customer. Then, leave that sheet with your customer.

I'm always amazed at the number of salespeople who are confounded over the customer's perception that their product is just like the other guys, when those salespeople have done nothing to show the customer how it is different.

As always, if you have done a good job of analyzing, preparing, and communicating, your customer's perception should be altered, and you gain the business. If you haven't done well at this, then your customer will continue to see no difference between buying it from you and buying from the next guy. And, if you haven't shown him/her sufficient reason to buy it from you, then he shouldn't.

From the customer's point of view, if your offering is just like the competitor's, then the customer is absolutely correct in buying from the cheaper source. However, if there is any difference between your offering and your competitors´, than the responsibility is totally yours to show the customer that difference. Follow the process described here, and you'll have far fewer customers treating you like a commodity.

Kevin Brown www.kbsinsight.blogspot.com

Data Mining Crucial to Succcess

Best Practice # 19:  Keeps track of all the names, titles, and positions of all the key contact people within every account.

by Dave Kahle  

http://ow.ly/3URMc

copyright (2011)

This is so basic, you would think everyone would be doing it.  Not so.  I was sitting across the desk from the operations manager of the company for which I had worked a number of years earlier.  We were reminiscing, and he told me this story.

In the time after I had left this company, it 

had been swallowed up by a large national company.  Now, as number two in the nation, it was again being merged with number three.  The government got involved, and mandated that every sales person fill out a form for every account doing over $100,000 in annual business. 

The operations manager described how he looked over the forms as he assembled them to send back to the government.  As he did so, he got a sick feeling in his stomach.  It seems that on many of the forms, the names listed were nicknames, and there was no title indicated. 

He told me that he realized that his sales people didn’t know the full name and correct title of the key contact people in their largest accounts! 

While that may sound like an exception to you, I have since discovered that it is the rule, not the exception.  The sad truth is that few sales people have systematically collected and stored the full names and accurate titles of their key contact people.  As a result, their proposals and correspondence are amateurish and they look unprofessional to their customers.

Such a simple little thing!

Yet, over and over again, it’s not the big things that separate the Top Gun performers from the pack.  It’s the methodical, disciplined adherence to excellence in the little things. 

I know there are thousands of sales people who are reading this right now, thinking “I already know that.”  Yet, most of them aren’t methodical and systematic in their execution of this practice.  It's not what you know that makes you into a Top Gun performer, it is what you do.

It is one thing to know what to do, it’s quite another to actually do it.  That’s why the best practices are called “practices.”

Kevin L. Brown www.kbsinsight.blogspot.com 

How to Poach an Employee from a Competitor

It’s natural to look at a rival’s staff and wonder who could help your business. Here’s how to lure a star employee to work for you.

Hilary Johnson  Inc. - http://ow.ly/3UL0a

Hiring an employee from a rival firm can mean bringing on someone who already knows your industry, your business, and can bring valuable new knowledge and even clients to you.

Little wonder that recruiters are often asked to bring home that particular prize.

“Companies are so focused on getting someone from the competition,” says Mike Sweeney, Principal of MAS Recruiting in Cherry Hill, NJ. “As soon as they see the resume, their eyes light up.”

Still, as enticing as it is, hiring from the competition requires caution and a certain degree of finesse, especially for a small-business owner. The process is loaded with pitfalls: you don’t want to get a reputation as a poacher, start a tit-for-tat talent war with a competitor or, worst of all, get sued for breaching a non-compete agreement.

So, before wading in to dangerous waters, here are some things to consider when you’re tempted to look to the competition for your next employee of the month.

Take the subtle approach

If you can afford it, hiring a search firm to find candidates can help keep you at an arm’s length from the potentially distasteful business of poaching.

A good search firm uses a polished, subtle approach. They’ll talk with potential candidates about “an opportunity” in vague terms, until they can gauge interest.

If your budget bars hiring a search firm, it’s best to copy the approach, says Brenda Snyder, chief operations officer at The Human Resource Group, a boutique search firm in Denver. She suggests using your professional network to spread the word that you’re hiring, and approaching the candidate you’re interested in on neutral ground, like a Chamber of Commerce meeting or conference. If you’re too aggressive, Snyder warns, you risk scaring away potential partners and/or suppliers.

“In the small business world, you don’t want to blow out your personal relationships,” Snyder says. “If you know that there’s a person you want at another firm, and if you don’t have a relationship with that firm, you can go for it. But if it’s a small industry, a small market, with small niche players, be very conscious of the consequences of that action. Think it through, like any good business leader would.”

Look before you leap

Perhaps the most important thing to think through is whether the candidate you’re eyeing is really worth the trouble. You don’t want to get stuck with someone else’s headache, says Martin Kartin, principal of boutique search firm Martin Kartin and Company in New York.

“You want to make sure you’re recruiting talent, as opposed to recruiting a resume,” Kartin says. “The biggest mistake small companies make is to look at the resume in terms of what the person says he has done, and what company the person has been with, and they automatically say ‘Oh, that’s great.’

“Even if they have the right job with the company, it doesn’t mean that they are a qualified candidate,” he warns.

To avoid the problem, do thorough reference checks, and really study the candidate’s background, to get a sense of what’s driving them, suggests Chris Von Der Ahe, a senior client partner at Korn/Ferry International in Los Angeles. You also need to assess whether the person will be a good fit at your firm, Von Der Ahe added. “Just because they work for a competitor, doesn’t mean they’ll fit into the culture.”

Culture differences can include large firm vs. small firm differences, and can also be as simple as geography. If the candidate you want is across the country, for example, and he or she has no ties to your area, it may be difficult for them to get acclimated.

For this reason, it’s often a smart move to take seriously the local people who come to you with their resumes, eager to join your firm, even if they don’t have the exact experience you’re looking for, says Mike Sweeney of MAS Recruiting.

“I tell companies you’re a lot better off getting someone who has a burning desire to come work at your company, for whatever reason, especially if they’re local,” Sweeney says. “They might not have all the bells and whistles that you want, but if they live local, and they have a real desire to work at your company, some months down the road, you’ll have struck gold.”

Watch for legal troubles

If it turns out that the candidate you’ve been eyeing at a competitor is as good as you hoped, and you want to begin talking with them more seriously about joining your firm, a critical step is to find out whether they have a non-compete agreement with their current employer. If they do, and they jump ship to join your firm, depending on the state in which you’re based, you may be in for a great deal of trouble, including a lawsuit in some cases. Some states take non-compete agreements very seriously. An employment lawyer can advise you on how best to proceed.

Keep in mind that talking with a candidate who is bound by a non-compete agreement is definitely a matter of weighing the risks and rewards, according to Mike Travis, principal of Travis & Company, in Newton Center, Massachusetts. “It’s very easy to run afoul of a non-compete, and it’s very expensive to fix your mistake,” he says.

Sell your story

If, after all the reference-checking, soul-searching, and risk-reward analysis, the candidate from a rival firm still looks as good as you imagined, don’t forget that you need to sell them on what you and your company have to offer. After all, why should they leave their job and join you? You need to make your opportunity sound more attractive than what they've already got. And remember, it’s not just about money. Most people are motivated by things they weren’t offered at their previous job: recognition, opportunity, and more innovation and excitement.

So, inspire that person to leave their job not just with a generous offer, but with everything they will be able to do and achieve at your company.

Recruiters know the drill. “We can’t lure people from point A to point B without a compelling story,” says Snyder of Human Resource Group. “Typically it’s not money. It’s always about the opportunity, the industry, or about the leadership.”

Watch your back

Finally, recognize that your competitors might be playing the same game you are. When spending the requisite time analyzing your staff and looking for gaps, don’t forget that you need to treat your best employees very well, so that when they receive a call from a recruiter, or are approached by a rival CEO, the only answer they’ll feel obliged to give is a firm “Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Know who your stars are, and make sure they’re well taken care of, and well paid,” said Sweeney at MAS Recruiting.

Kevin L. Brown www.kbsinsight.blogspot.com