Freelancers live life in the fast lane.

And it’s no wonder: we are our own marketing, production, administrative, and financial staff. Many choose to become solo entrepreneurs to have more time to devote to non-work interests and to achieve a better work-life balance. Passionate about developing our businesses, many of us end up sacrificing much of what means the most to us in the process.

Faster-better-easier becomes the mantra to overcome the 24-hour dilemma. The express lane is a danger zone, for your health and your business. Slowing down intelligently boots your effectiveness.

Focus and center:

Instead of rushing to make or return that important phone call, invest a few minutes in deep breathing exercises. You will be more likely to “hear” with your whole brain and respond appropriately.

Read the key words:

You’ve received an email with a fascinating project request and are itching to answer “Yes! I can! Choose me me me me because I’m sooo good and let me tell you why!”  Hang on for a sec’ and ask yourself some questions to try to decode the content first. For example:

- Is the writer asking What, How or Why questions? This could modulate the focus of your response (deliverable, process, qualifications).

- Is the writer seeking to move away from something (change service providers, save money, unsatisfactory deliverables etc.) or toward something (new communication or internationalization campaign for instance)? In the first case, you’ll likely be responding to a problem within an existing context and need first to reassure the prospect. In the second, you’ll have greater leeway to promote your full range of services and partner/brainstorm with the prospect.

Keep your blood levels steady and feed your brain

Often, my concentration is such I forget to eat and don’t even feel hunger or thirst – or don’t want to break the flow to make and eat lunch if my stomach does signal needing fuel. That’s the fast track to problems. Now, I keep an assortment of nuts and dried fruits on my desk to nibble on along with a thermos of herb tea in case I really can’t/don’t want to head for the kitchen. The brain burns 1.5 calories per minute, uses up to half of the body’s oxygen and is dependent on proper nutrition to for top neural function and neurogenesis.

Adopt power naps

Do you get drowsy after lunch? After exercising? In the middle of the afternoon? We all have our own biorhythms and tracking how you feel over a few days will help you figure out when you are most on the ball or not. Power naps are not just for those days when you did not get enough sleep the night before. Research shows napping can boost your skills and your performance. I’d never been able to doze off at will before and spent part of the summer training myself to do so. Even 10 minutes relaxing in a comfortable position with your eyes closed, attentive to your breathing, will help recharge your mental batteries.

One day a week, turn it all off

For some, myself included, turning it all off for one whole day is tough. Yet if you check email, work on your blog, or contribute to forums and various social media networks 7 days a week, you risk finding it difficult to achieve a meaningful work-life balance. Your family, your friends, and simply yourself deserve to have you 100% there at least one day out of the week! I’m working on this one…. (confession..my smartphone is email enabled…shush…)

You can get a peek at what the book is all about on www.brainrules.net.

In reading the book, I had a number of “light bulb moments”, making connections with tidbits and assembling them with new understanding. That is not surprising since

what we pay attention to is often profoundly influenced by memory… Different environments create different expectations…[Cultural differences]  too can affect how a given audience perceives a given presentation or class lecture.
(pp. 75-76)

I highly recommend this book to anyone who seeks to understand and improve how they learn, how they work, or to gain insight in the type of intelligence their child displays and support its development.

Within Rule 4, Medina sets us straight on a modern myth.

In today’s IT-dominated and connected world and open space “hot-desking” office environments, effective multitasking is viewed as a key organizational skill to acquire and hone. It is also a quality many rely upon to juggle tightly packed agendas and achieve some sense of work/life balance.

Medina explains why effective multitasking is impossible, and moreover, how striving to multitask actually wastes time and causes potentially serious mistakes.

I fell for the multitasking hype like a fish takes to water. I come from a polychronic culture, which allows doing several things at once, places relationships over the task at hand, deals with interruptions without batting an eye-lash, and, to use Trompenaar’s term, views time as synchronization rather than as sequence. Polychronic cultures are typically high context cultures too, while monochronic cultures tend to be low context cultures.

The brain multitasks all the time: you can walk and chew gum, engage in a conversation with a friend while your brain is also making your heart pump blood through your body, you can feel hungry and tend to an interpersonal need at the same time.

Multitasking, when it comes to paying attention, is a myth. The brain naturally focuses on concepts sequentially, one at a time…[Paying attention] is the resource you forcibly deploy while trying to listen to a boring lecture at school. It is the activity that collapses as your brain wanders during a tedious presentation at work. This attentional ability is not capable of multitasking.
(pp. 84-85, emphasis mine)

So when you are working on a project and the phone rings, or you are speaking on the phone to a client and a family member walks into your office, what happens?

• Your sensory system picks up the distraction. Your brain has to disengage from what it is doing before it can respond. Your mental switchboard – the anterior prefrontal cortex – kicks in to alert the brain it is going to have to shift attention.
• Your brain sends another message to your mental switchboard that it needs to activate the right rules to respond (to the phone, to the family member…).
• Once the distraction is over, your brain needs to take each of these steps again, and then reactivate the rules so that your can return to the task that had your attention before.

These steps have to occur in sequence. It seems to happen quickly, but for the brain it takes a long time. If you mumble to yourself  “Now, where was I?” or grumble to your spouse “Oh no! Look at what you made me do?”, you realize why multitasking is a myth.

The best you can say is that people who appear to be good at multitasking actually have good working memories, capable of paying attention to inputs one at a time.

Studies show that a person who is interrupted takes 50 percent longer to accomplish a task. Not only that, he or she makes up to 50 percent more errors….
(p.87)

Takeaway:

Multitasking can be effective to get chores done that don’t require a lot of attention – ironing while dictating a grocery list, washing the dishes while planning tomorrow in your head and so on.

But when you want to “work smart” and work well, let your brain focus. You’ll gain in productivity and quality.

• A company’s image
• A company’s reputation
• The perception of a given product or service’s quality
• The likelihood that a prospect will respond to a call to action

It’s one of my pet peeves. I’ve hammered the message here, here, and here, and again here and there.

Now, thanks to Sue Anderson-Lenz over at Marketing Lure, we’ve got numbers to back that up.

Sue ran a survey with 163 participants – business professionals largely from the US, “although the survey reached people in 16 different countries.” Note: it is not clear how many respondents were indeed from outside the US.

“One hundred percent of the people surveyed acknowledge that writing errors indeed influence their opinions. Nearly eight out of ten people have eliminated a prospective company — in part because of writing errors.“

And,

“Write‐in responses to one question reveal the impact that writing errors have on company credibility. Respondents said that errors will cause them to question the company and their leaders who permit writing errors to happen.”

Further,

“More than half of all respondents agreed that one error in any print material could be the kiss of death for a prospective company.
Four out of ten people expressed an extremely low tolerance for errors in electronic articles and books.”

Download a copy of Sue’s report from her blog: it’s a must-read -

For clients, as a needed reminder of the extent to which business success depends on good writing (no, it’s not an expense, it’s an investment).

And for professionals of the written word, as actionable data to support your positioning, dialog, and negotiations with prospects.

Ca prend combien de temps de signer un projet ?

C’est une des questions que me posent souvent des collègues qui envisagent de faire évoluer leur activité d’une clientèle intermédiaire (qui leur sous-traite les projets pour un donneur d’ordre final) à une clientèle directe.

La réponse ?

Il n’y a pas de réponse : cela peut se faire très vite, ou cela peut prendre des années.

Dans mon ancienne vie de directrice du développement européen d’un cabinet international d’architecture d’entreprise, j’avais dans ma ligne de mire deux grandes entreprises américaines que je voulais absolument ferrer comme clientes pour ma boîte (c’était un peu un défi, aucun des bureaux de cette société n’avait réussi à les gagner en plus de 10 ans d’efforts). Cela a pris 3 ans pour l’une et 4 ans pour l’autre, mais nous avons signé des projets d’envergure.

129 jours

Quatre mois et demi. Voilà le délai entre le premier contact et la signature du projet que je suis en train de réaliser. Le gagner ne fut pas un long fleuve tranquille.

4 décembre 2009 à fin janvier 2010 : prise de contact, échanges de nombreux courriels, découverte du client, et démarche pédagogique.

Mi-février 2010 : changement d’interlocuteur pour la demande de devis, la prise de brief détaillé, l’optimisation de la mise en forme du document source pour maîtriser les coûts. Le projet est pile dans mon coeur de métier, je souhaite vivement le gagner, et je serre mon devis, offrant en prime la relecture finale après mise en page comme geste commercial.

Tous les signaux sont verts, je suis sûre de mon coup, cela fait des mois que l’on échange, on se comprend, la dynamique est agréable.

Rien n’est certain avant la signature !

Catastrophe.

Le nouvel interlocuteur refuse mon devis, optant pour celui de l’agence de traduction, qu’il avait aussi contactée.

L’agence propose un tarif presque moitié moins cher et une livraison plus rapide.

Nous continuons à échanger, je le mets en garde. Très vite et pas cher vu, le projet, c’est une recette à risque. Il comprend, mais il est confiant et le budget prime.

J’ai le moral dans les chaussettes : que de temps investi pour se retrouver les mains vides.

Je peste.

Rebondissement

Comme je le soulignais ici, un projet perdu n’est pas toujours perdu à vie.

Fin mars 2010, nouvel email de mon feu donneur d’ordre : le travail de l’agence n’est pas bon, pourrais-je en faire un audit et proposer ma version d’un échantillon qu’il aura choisi ?

Mon gaillard prend ses précautions maintenant, et je le comprends !  Et je le félicite d’être revenu vers moi en toute franchise et toute simplicité. La preuve que, pour ce client, la qualité prime, il en va de leur image de marque.

C’est l’occasion de prouver le discours que je leur tiens depuis décembre ! Je réalise l’audit et lui envoie. Quelques minutes plus tard, la réponse tombe sans appel :

Nous travaillons ensemble, nous aurions dû depuis le départ.

Beaucoup de temps et d’énergie investis, mais j’ai gagné le respect et la confiance d’un client qui a compris le schmilblick.

Take away :

Ayez de la suite dans les idées, ne changez pas votre discours en cours de route, et apprenez la patience !

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of taking part in a guided tour l’Ujjef organized for its members of an expo at the Musée des arts décoratifs. The expo, La Publicité au secours des grandes causes, was a retrospective on how advertising has raised and shaped awareness of major humanitarian causes since the early part of the last century. The exhibit runs until May 9th, 2010.

A round table took place after the visit, asking  “Should and can humanitarian aid put itself on display?” Panel members included Bruno David, Founding President of Communication Sans Frontières, Rony Brauman, former President of MSF-France and Research Director of the Médecins Sans Frontières Foundation, Benoît Heilbrunn, semiologist and Professor of Marketing at the ESCP-EAP, and Oliviero Toscani, a well-known and sometimes controversial photographer (recall the Benetton campaigns in the 1990s).

Having just seen often raw and violent representations depicting faithfully some of the horrors in our world, I was on another wavelength than that of much of the lofty intellectual exchanges taking place on the small stage. A contemporary video clip on violence towards women, among others, was fresh in my mind as well as the guide’s chilling story that that very morning, a young man in his twenties has busted out laughing watching it.

How faithful and how revealing must a consciousness-raising campaign be to be able to touch viewers today? Where is the line between decency and exploitation? Should these campaigns follow business advertising’s trends or find a voice of its own? Is there a difference between creating a need in consumers to sell a product and raising awareness to sell a cause? Can a public authority dictate what should or should not be shown and should it? And now that sustainable development and ethical business practices are all the rage, how great is the risk that humanitarian causes are going to be increasingly used for commercial ends? These are some of the myriad questions inherent in the debate.

Given my state of mind after seeing the exhibit, I particularly enjoyed some of Oliviero’s remarks and questions. His premise is that everything is political, and that of course speaks to the political scientist in me. Here are some pearls I jotted down (the translations from French are mine):

[Political] Power needs communications to succeed at imposing its will. Communications need the [political] power’s permission to be able to speak out.

The modern photographer does not take pictures. He creates images.

At what distance must the problem be for one to get involved?

When you watch an ad on TV or a longer clip at the movies, when you receive countless direct mail fundraising campaigns at home, what resonates with you? Does humour catch your attention? Are you moved by and feel guilty at the sight of starving children?  Are you more responsive to offbeat communication styles? Do you think that, for each era, public opinion’s view of what should or should not be shown or said changes? Does it differ from one culture to another? As you write copy for or translate humanitarian aid campaigns, do you take that into consideration?

The floor is yours. I’d love to hear your views.

The discussion with your prospective client has gone well. You’ve listened actively, asked all the right questions, taken a good client brief, showed you understand his objectives, presented your USPs, and illustrated how and why you are the best professional to solve his problem. The client is interested in your services and enthused by the manner in which you propose to tackle the project.

The signals are all green. You’ve achieved precommitment.

Don’t let them turn orange.

High added value services, convincing fees

Let’s face it. It’s rare for a prospect to hear a fee proposal and accept it without blinking — regardless of your rate.  (Should that happen, start to worry: either you’ve sold yourself short, you’ve missed a key component in the project’s detailed specs, or the client is a poor business person.) A prospect will strive to get you to lower your rate or to get more for less. It’s a predictable phase in the negotiation process and you’re prepared to exchange a few concessions. Successful negotiations are reciprocal, each party walks away with something. The “giving up” is balanced.

Facing a monkey wrench

What happens, though, when the music stops and there is no choreographed dance? What do you do if the prospect states flatly “your rate is too high” or turns silent, putting the onus on you?

How do you typically react? Do you try to prove your rate is in line with the service offered? Do you try to convince your prospect again of the benefits of working with you, running the risk of overselling? Do you get a tad defensive, explaining how hard the job is, the time it is going to take you to accomplish it?

Make friends with silence

Most of us are ill at ease in the face of silence or in being silent ourselves. It triggers anxiety, discomfort, fear or guilt. Rarely does it feel natural or comfortable.

In a fee negotiation, striving to fill the silence is rarely a winning tactic: it dilutes your message, distracts both parties from paying attention to the key issues that brought you together and weakens your credibility.

As Mahatma Gandhi said: “The more efficient a force is, the more silent and the more subtle it is.” Try to remain confident and quiet, let the prospect break the silence.

Three possible outcomes

1. The prospect commits. You’ve won the negotiation hands down. It’s smart then for you to reward your new client in some way.
2. The prospect offers a compromise. The discussion is reopened on more balanced grounds, it’s up to you to show goodwill if the prospect’s suggestion is reasonable.
3. The prospect walks away, the negotiation is closed. Don’t regret losing the project, the conditions for winning it would not have served you well. And sometimes, prospects do come back.

Remember, if you sell yourself short, the prospect may worry you’ll sell him short.

Enfonçons le clou : j’ai adoré le proverbe proposé par Frédéric Bascunana sur le blog de Joël Chaudy :

L’e-Réputation est aux entreprises ce qu’un lumbago peut représenter pour une danseuse étoile la veille d’un ballet.

Entreprises, vous veillez à votre image de marque. Vous investissez des sommes et des énergies conséquentes à concevoir votre présence en ligne, à rédiger avec soin vos messages clés, à peaufiner votre référencement naturel, ou à créer un blog pour renforcer le lien entre une de vos marques phares et ses fans.

Mais il y a une chose qui me dépasse.

Si vous avez fait le choix (pas forcément optimal -  parlons-en !) de ne pas confier la rédaction ou la traduction dans d’autres langues de vos contenus si soigneusement préparés, de grâce ! Allez au bout de cette logique limitative !

N’oubliez pas la balise “notranslate” dans l’entête de vos pages HTML ! En un clic de souris, votre image de marque et vos efforts pour séduire le prospect par le sérieux et la pertinence de votre expertise font “pschitt”.

C’est dommage, non ?

Surtout quand, en l’occurrence, la page présente le Département Image des entreprises et institutions d’une des agences de conseil en communication françaises les plus renommées.

Publicis Consultants

Le Groupe Yoplait, présent dans une cinquantaine de pays, a lancé un blog d’entreprise au printemps 2008,  Bravo la petite fleur.

Que penseraient des consommateurs américains qui s’efforcent à suivre les “niouzes” de leur yaourt français favori en lisant l’anglais charabia ci-dessous ?

Blog de Yoplait

Evitez les lumbagos !

Confiez le contenu visant un public étranger à des professionnels ou ayez le réflexe <meta name=”google” value=”notranslate” />

Babylon lance un service de traduction humaine et la lecture de leur FAQ est édifiante. Vous me pardonnerez de ne pas inclure le lien hypertexte, mais je ne vais pas leur faire une fleur.

Le système qui permet la réalisation de ce service est une mise au point innovante de Babylon : mettre en contact des traducteurs professionnels aussi bien que des amateurs et ceux qui ont besoin de services de traduction et gérer la communication et l’échange d’informations entre eux en prenant en compte le décalage horaire, l’urgence de la tache et le tarif le moins cher.

Source : Mobifrance

La lecture attentive de leur FAQ (disponible qu’en anglais) fait ressortir un certain nombre de points inquiétants, tant pour le donneur d’ordre que pour le prestataire. Quelques exemples suffisent :

• Babylon applique un coefficient multiplicateur entre 70 et 100%, suivant le crédit de mots achetés.
  Le client est facturé entre 0,16 cents US (soit 0,1139 centimes d’euro au taux de change du jour) et 0,136 cents US (soit 0,096 centimes d’euro) et le traducteur (professionnel ou amateur, traduction spécialisée ou non, pour information ou publication – peu importe!) est payé 0,08 cents US (soit 0,059 centimes d’euro)
  Babylone apporte-t-il une valeur ajoutée à la traduction ? Non. La marge, c’est du beurre, récompense de la mise en relation.
• Babylon règle les honoraires des traducteurs par Paypal ou Moneybookers.
  Les frais associés sont à la charge des traducteurs. Faites le calcul…
• La responsabilité pour la perte éventuelle de données incombe entièrement au traducteur.
  Dois-je vous dresser la liste de tous les risques informatiques possibles et des difficultés, dans de telles relations tripartites purement virtuelles, de redresser le tir ?
• Ni la FAQ ni les conditions générales ne font référence à la TVA ou tout autre impôt ou taxe.
  En effet, c’est très ennuyeux d’avoir à se préoccuper de questions fiscales.

Un traducteur humain professionnel travaillant légalement ne s’y risquerait pas !

Il n’est pas étonnant alors que l’article 6.1 des conditions générales précise, et je cite par copié-collé, majuscules et fautes de grammaire incluses :

NEITHER BABYLON NOR THE HUMAN TRANSLATORS ASSUMES NO LIABILITY OR RESPONSIBILITY FOR ERRORS, OMISSIONS OR AMBIGUITIES IN THE TRANSLATED TEXT.

Autrement dit, chers clients, et en bon français, si la traduction est une daube truffée d’erreurs, c’est pour votre pomme.

L’offre a-t-elle toujours l’air aussi alléchante ?

Lire le communiqué de l’UNAPL

Seth Godin invited 70 people to contribute a 200-word piece each, choosing one word to show what they feel matters now. Seth is giving out this e-book free and inviting readers and bloggers to add their own contribution.

Here’s mine.

TOUCH

Touch is our first language.

Its importance in infant development is equal or greater than that of food.  Touch is not an emotion, but induces feelings that trigger emotions and provokes the release of endorphins.  It is one of the pillars of non-verbal communication that proclaims our humanness and recognizes “the other”. The benefits of touch are so broad the University of Miami launched a Touch Research Institute in 1991.

Many Western societies are touch-deprived because it is socially unacceptable to touch. Virtual communications and health alerts like Swine flu contribute to discouraging touch. When I first went back to Vietnam, I was surprised when near strangers would walk down the street with me, linking their arm to mine. One apologizes when accidentally brushing against a stranger on the sidewalks of New York or Paris. Yet this arm linking eased human connecting and communications; barriers fell. Is the recent popularity of spas and alternative medicines such as message therapy the Western world’s answer to touch deprivation?

Take time out from stroking your keyboard. Relearn your first language, acknowlege those whose path you cross. Touch a hand, touch a shoulder, hug those you care about. It’s a healtful gesture for you and a precious gift to others.