Kip Gregory, founder of the Gregory Group is a consultant, speaker and author of the book “Winning Clients in a Wired World”. He is one of the country’s leading authorities on using computers and the Web to create time-saving, money-making, franchise-building systems. His bio says that he “specializes in coaching financial services professionals and companies on how to win and keep more business through smarter use of technology and the Internet”.
Over on Grow Smart Business, I recently had the opportunity to speak with him about his work on making companies more efficient and to see how his book, written in 2004, still applies to the fast changing technology landscape as well as what he would add if he were to do a sequel in this social media fueled world in 2009. Here is the transcript of that interview:
Steve: You consult with clients of all sizes across a variety of industries. What are some common threads you see that all are challenged with in using technology efficiently?
Kip: That’s easy; having too many choices – from what software to buy to which features to use to the equipment to how to navigate the Internet to what to do with what you find there. It’s a long list. People are simply drowning in options.
Not surprisingly, lots of folks decide to tune out. They may start out enthusiastically but go from confusion to feeling overwhelmed to frustration at their inability to decipher what alternatives makes the most sense. They end up sticking to what they know, a completely understandable reaction, albeit one that can be deadly as a business strategy – especially if you’re in a highly competitive job or industry.
So then the question shifts to “How? …how DO I get my arms, and my head, around which technologies I should be utilizing?” The good news is there are all kinds of resources – people and sites – that can assist you in answering that question. We’ll talk about a few in a moment.
The second common thread I see is people recreating content unnecessarily, whether it’s a proposal, letter, email, presentation, web page… whatever. Because they don’t have a good way of organizing what they’ve already developed, most folks end up reproducing variations of the same stuff over and over again simply because they can’t locate – much less repurpose – what they’ve created previously.
Personal experience with that challenge years ago is how I developed my knowledge journal concept. Journaling is a powerful, easy way to create a dashboard of frequently used content in Microsoft Word. Using one can save you a ton of time. You can download a full explanation of how to build a knowledge journal from the Winning Clients web site at http://www.winningclients.com/excerpt.php.
What’s more, today there’s a whole category of software – Desktop Search – that will index the contents of your hard drive so when you want to find the sort of stuff mentioned above …material you might subsequently catalog in a journal …you can search on a word or phrase from that content – a file name, a piece of an email, a snippet of presentation text – and these tools will instantly list everything stored on your computer that matches what you asked for. Google offers a version (http://desktop.google.com) as do X1 (http://www.x1.com) and Copernic (http://www.copernic.com). These are truly magical tools, available for free or next to nothing ($50), that can make your life infinitely more efficient.
To read the rest of this article and get some great advice on small business technology, check out out Grow Smart Business.
For more information on Kip Gregory and The Gregory Group’s services, visit
http://www.gregory-group.com. To sign up for Kip’s Tips newsletter, go to
http://www.gregory-group.com/register.php.
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