IF I COULD TELL YOU

Eyes Movement

2011-02-24T12:22:00.002+08:00

Small Business Ideas - How to Match Your Talents with Your Passion Like Franchise King Ron Joyce

2010-10-04T13:59:00.000+08:00

Small Business Ideas - How to Break Through with Your Business Like Mary Kay Ash

2010-10-04T13:57:00.000+08:00

Small Business Ideas - How to Sell, Promote, and Showcase Your Business Like P.T. Barnum

2010-10-04T13:55:00.000+08:00

Small Business Idea- How to build a business the HP way

2010-10-04T13:51:00.001+08:00

Small Business Idea- How to find your next business

2010-10-04T13:49:00.000+08:00

Small Business Idea- Top 3 Lessons From Simon Fuller ( American Idol)

2010-10-04T13:45:00.000+08:00

Bill Gates Speech At Harvard ( part 5)

2010-10-04T13:22:00.000+08:00

Bill Gates Speech At Harvard ( part 4)

2010-10-04T13:20:00.000+08:00

Bill Gates Speech At Harvard ( part 3)

2010-10-04T13:19:00.000+08:00

Bill Gates Speech At Harvard ( part 2)

2010-10-04T13:14:00.000+08:00

Bill Gates Speech At Harvard ( part 1)

2010-10-04T13:01:00.000+08:00

SMART Goal Setting

2010-10-04T12:58:00.000+08:00

How to set SMART goals

2010-10-04T12:54:00.000+08:00

SWOT Analysis: How to perform one for your organisation

2010-10-04T12:51:00.001+08:00

Small Business Idea- Top 3 Lessons From Akio Morita ( Sony Founder )

2010-10-04T12:41:00.000+08:00

Top 10 Inspirational Business Quotes

2010-10-04T12:20:00.002+08:00

Top 10 Inspirational Business Quotes

#1: Steve Jobs, Apple

“Believe that things will work somehow out… follow your intuition and curiosity… trust your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path… You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future… The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it… Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

#2: Oprah Winfrey, Harpo

“What I know for sure is that if you want to have success, you can’t make success your goal. The key is not to worry about being successful, but to instead work toward being significant – and the success will naturally follow… If you do work that you love, and work that fulfills you, the rest will come. And, I truly believe, that the reason I’ve been able to be so financially successful is because my focus has never, ever for one minute been money. Would you do your job and not be paid for it? I would do this job, and take on a second job just to make ends meet if nobody paid me. That’s how you know you are doing the right thing.”

#3: Tony Robbins

“A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken a new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided… The most important thing you can do to achieve your goals is to make sure that as soon as you set them, you immediately begin to create momentum. The most important rules that I ever adopted to help me in achieving my goals were those I learned from a very successful man who taught me to first write down the goal, and then to never leave the site of setting a goal without first taking some form of positive action toward its attainment.”

#4: Ted Turner, Turner Broadcasting

“All my life people have said that I wasn’t going to make it… You can never quit. Winners never quit, and quitters never win.”

#5: Anita Roddick, The Body Shop

“Whatever you do, be different – that was the advice my mother gave me, and I can’t think of better advice for an entrepreneur. If you’re different, you will stand out.”

#6: Tony Robbins

“For changes to be of any true value, they’ve got to be lasting and consistent. Any time you sincerely want to make a change, the first thing you must do is to raise your standards… If you don’t set a baseline standard for what you’ll accept in life, you’ll find it’s easy to slip into behaviors and attitudes or a quality of life that’s far below what you deserve… Whatever happens, take responsibility… The only thing that’s keeping you from getting what you want is the story you keep telling yourself.”

#7: Chris Gardner, Gardner Rich & Co.

“Find something that you love. Something that gets you so excited you can’t wait to get out of bed in the morning. Forget about money. Be happy.”

#8: Donald Trump

“I was relentless, even in the face of total lack of encouragement, because much more often than you’d think, sheer persistence is the difference between success and failure.”

#9: Isadore Sharp, Four Seasons

“Whatever you do, don’t ever use a crutch, and don’t ever think of having an excuse for not having said, ‘Yeah, I did my best.’”

#10: Trip Hawkins, Electronic Arts

“One quality of entrepreneurship is just persistence, not giving up because you have road blocks and also not giving in because other people tell you that you’re nuts. You are nuts and you should be proud of it. Stick with what you believe in.”

Pricing Strategies

2010-09-19T20:54:00.003+08:00

What price should you ask for your product or service?
If you want to set a price that brings with it a healthy profit... something that will most definitely keep that wolf from howling at your door (and the bank manager at bay)... read our '4 Key Pricing Strategies' below.

4 Key Pricing Strategies

There are at least four ways to calculate your pricing structure:

Cost-plus pricing is calculated on the cost of producing your product or service plus an amount that you need to make a profit. This is usually expressed as a percentage of the cost. It is generally more suited to businesses that deal with large volumes or which operate in markets dominated by competition on price.

Value-based pricing focuses on the price you believe customers are willing to pay, based on the benefits your business offers them. It depends upon you being able to clearly define and demonstrate the benefits your product or service provides to customers.

Target-return pricing involves setting a price to achieve a target return on your investment.

Psychological pricing takes into account your customers' perceptions of your price, including positioning, popular price points (the point at which they are more willing to make a purchase), and fair pricing (what they consider to be 'fair').

1.Pricing Tactics Discounting

Discounting can be a powerful short-term measure but it does carry some dangers too. You could use it to get rid of old stock or to encourage large orders. Consumers may balk at paying full price in the future or begin to perceive your product or service as somehow inferior to competitive brands. Discounting may send a signal to consumers that price is negotiable and that value can be given away. Trying to sweeten the deal by bundling additional products and services with the core offering can drive up costs (and decrease profits) and teach consumers that the product or service is not valuable.

2.Odd Value Pricing

If your consumers buy primarily on price, you can offer your products at a penny or two less than normal on bulk orders.

3.Low Pricing To Attract New Customers

You can sell a product at a low price with the sole aim of winning new customers.

4.Skimming

If your product or service is unique in the market, you can sell it at a high price. There's a danger that you could just price yourself out of your market.

Penetration

To gain market share, you can sell your product or service at a lower price and gradually raise your prices.

Conclusion

However you price your product or service, take time to measure the impact it will have on consumer perception and demand and of course, on your company's long-term profits.

Three Skills to Improve Conversation

2010-09-15T22:41:00.002+08:00

Three Skills to Improve Conversation

One key to becoming a great conversationalist is to pause before replying. A short pause, of three to five seconds, is a very classy thing to do in a conversation. When you pause, you accomplish three goals simultaneously.

The Benefits of Pausing

First, you avoid running the risk of interrupting if the other person is just catching his or her breath before continuing. Second, you show the other person that you are giving careful consideration to his or her words by not jumping in with your own comments at the earliest opportunity. The third benefit of pausing is that you will actually hear the other person better. His or her words will soak into a deeper level of your mind and you will understand what he or she is saying with greater clarity. By pausing, you mark yourself as a brilliant conversationalist.

Ask Questions

Another way to become a great conversationalist is to question for clarification. Never assume that you understand what the person is saying or trying to say. Instead, ask, "How do you mean, exactly?"

This is the most powerful question I've ever learned for controlling a conversation. It is almost impossible not to answer. When you ask, "How do you mean?" the other person cannot stop himself or herself from answering more extensively. You can then follow up with other open-ended questions and keep the conversation rolling along.

Paraphrase the Speaker's Words

The third way to become a great conversationalist is to paraphrase the speaker's words in your own words. After you've nodded and smiled, you can then say, "Let me see if I've got this right. What you're saying is . . ."

Demonstrate Attentiveness

By paraphrasing the speaker's words, you demonstrate in no uncertain terms that you are genuinely paying attention and making every effort to understand his or her thoughts or feelings. And the wonderful thing is, when you practice effective listening, other people will begin to find you fascinating. They will want to be around you. They will feel relaxed and happy in your presence.

Listening Builds Trust

The reason why listening is such a powerful tool in developing the art and skill of conversation is because listening builds trust. The more you listen to another person, the more he or she trusts you and believes in you.

Listening also builds self-esteem. When you listen attentively to another person, his or her self-esteem will naturally increase.

Listening Develops Discipline

Finally, listening builds self-discipline in the listener. Because your mind can process words at 500-600 words per minute, and we can only talk at about 150 words per minute, it takes a real effort to keep your attention focused on another person's words. If you do not practice self-discipline in conversation, your mind will wander in a hundred different directions. The more you work at paying close attention to what the other person is saying, the more self-disciplined you will become. In other words, by learning to listen well, you actually develop your own character and your own personality.

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, make a habit of pausing before replying in any conversation or discussion. You will be amazed at how powerful this technique really is.

Second, continually ask, "How do you mean?" in response to anything that is not perfectly clear. This gives you even more time to listen well.

Client Payment Problems?

2010-09-15T15:45:00.001+08:00

Client Payment Problems? Try These 3 Simple Tips

Signing up new clients is a joy…unless their payment bounces. If that happens to you, you’re likely to feel guilty, uncomfortable and wonder what you did wrong. To top it off, a client whose payment bounces is likely to avoid contacting you, leaving you to wonder what to do next.

If this happens to you, the first thing to realize is it’s NOT PERSONAL. Yes, you’re the one temporarily getting the short end of the deal, but keep in mind it isn’t because you didn’t do enough, aren’t good enough or don’t deserve to be paid.

As a woman entrepreneur, you must learn how to navigate these kinds of sticky situations with grace, compassion and leadership. The good news is that if handled correctly, most client payment situations can be quickly resolved and can even help you deepen your relationship with your client.

Let me give you my 3 “best practices” tips for resolving client payment situations and eliminating any feelings of guilt, discomfort or self-blame in the process.

Tip #1 Don’t Let Your Feelings Hijack You From Standing In Your Power

Seeing that “sorry - payment declined” message appear in your inbox can trigger a whole host of feelings: from anger and righteousness to guilt or self-blame. Before you let these feelings hijack you from standing in your power, take a deep breathe… and another. This is not something that was done “to” you. It’s just something that happens when you’re in business.

What will help is if you think about your client for a moment. Are they likely feeling embarrassed, guilty or even humiliated? Probably. And if they are, they’ll typically avoid wanting to talk with you. Instead of letting them shut you out, simply email or better yet, call, and in a confident and compassionate tone of voice, tell them:

“I see that your payment didn’t go through and I’d like to talk with you about how we can get this taken care of.”

If you sound relaxed and confident they’ll feel reassured and you’re much more likely to create a positive outcome (hint: that means YOU getting paid!).

Tip #2 Know In Advance What Your Limits Are

When you discuss the situation with your client you’ll want to know in advance how far you’re willing to flex, how long you’re willing to wait and whether or not you’re willing to continue working with them until their payments are caught up.

At the beginning of your conversation, clearly indicate that you HAVE limits. Doing so will help you feel that you are standing in your power and are not helpless or a victim of someone else’s money drama.

For example, start your conversation by asking them what happened and what their plan is for correcting the situation. Suggest that they make a payment today, with you on the phone, even if it’s for a fraction of what they owe. At this delicate point, intention and consistency is more important than the actual dollar amount.

If your client is feeling like a victim of circumstances and isn’t able to make a commitment, then it’s time to let them know that while you understand they are in a tough spot, asking you to wait compromises your relationship and ability to create the results they want. Stand firm and ask them to creatively brainstorm ways they can create some ready cash. Trust me, if their LIFE depended on it, they would find the money!

Tip #3 Stand Strong — Your Client Is Looking To YOU As The Leader In This Situation

Always assume that this situation is temporary and that your client has every intention of paying. Usually this is the truth, and they just need a little support, a few extra days or some creative ways to get back on track. If you’re there as their advocate and collaborating together, their embarrassment will turn into relief and they’ll thank and appreciate you for your help and support. Just remember, THEIR payment dilemma is not YOURS to take on. By you standing in your power as leader, you’ll help your client stand in their power too, even when they initially didn’t feel they could.

While Client Payment Issues Aren’t Personal, They ARE An Opportunity For Personal Growth…

Experiencing the occasional client payment issue is a fact of doing business. If you’re experiencing this situation more than occasionally then it’s time to take a look at why you’re attracting these situations into your life. Whether they happen to you rarely or more frequently, each time is an opportunity for you to stand in your power — with compassion — and gracefully negotiate an outcome that’s a win-win for both of you.

Plan your business

2010-09-15T09:43:00.003+08:00

Hi My Friends,

have you thought about what your
business is gonna look like at
the end of the year?

Do you have any plans on where you
are going with it?

Whatever it is, it is important to
for you to know which direction
you're heading towards - For if you do
not know where you are going, you
may not end up anywhere in your business.

Here's are some tips to get you started.

1. P = Pinpoint your destination.

Write up a plan of things that you
need to do and the timeline that you
need to complete it.

2. L = Leave Your Excuses Behind

There are FAR TOO MANY people all too
happy to provide a reason to why they
cannot do something. Why they cannot
make money.

Don't be one of them (there are plenty,
your spot is already taken.). Write down
all your “Yes” reasons and leave the
whining to the majority.

3. A = Activate Your Avenue

There are so many types of business
models. And you do not have to make
money the same way others do.

There are a lot of unanswered
questions and problems in different
niches.

If you can answer them clearly and
specifically, you'll be amazed at the
momentum you gain just by
solving other people's problem.

4. N = Navigate the Narrows

You need to have a narrow focus. Yet
you don't see a lot of people concentrating
solely on those things. They get caught
up in the latest fad.

What does it REALLY take to make money
online? 3 things : a. Traffic. b. List.
c. Conversions.

Just focus on this system and go simple
and you'll win big.

5. S = Success is NOT an Accident

Your success will be up to… You.
You will not wake up tomorrow with
money in your inbox without having
done something.

And that's a fact.

Others have done it. So, why not you?

Reasons Why People Will Buy From You Over Your Competitors

2010-09-15T09:25:00.001+08:00

Reasons Why People Will Buy From You Over Your Competitors

6 Reasons Your Prospects Will Choose to Become Your Customers

1. Their experiences with you. Your prospects will judge your worthiness based on how you make them feel. This includes how well you communicate, your content “depth,” your website’s quality and much more. Your prospects will also be more likely to engage in “conversations” with you when you allow them to interact in ways they prefer (i.e some may resonate with a blog post while others are more engaged by video or audio content). And always remember you are marketing to people first so build the human bond by remembering personal details and listening carefully.

2. Your product or service benefits. There are two basic reasons why people purchase anything – to increase pleasure (e.g. glowing health, freedom, popularity) or decrease pain (e.g. stress, financial problems, poor health). Therefore, focus on your product or service’s most compelling benefits as you communicate with your target audience – then, make sure you deliver on your promises. Be specific.

3. Your trustworthiness and reputation. Protect your good name and do everything in your power to ensure that your customers, prospects, friends, employees, and colleagues view you as a person of value. Keep in mind that your credibility, plausibility, and truthfulness will also win you far more customers than exaggerated claims and over-the-top promises.

4. The value they receive. Although most consumers are price-conscious, the vast majority do not consider price alone when making their buying decisions. Rather, they consider value: the difference between what something costs and its worth to the buyer. What does value look like in the social media world? Answer: great content, expert advice and personal connections.

5. Make transactions easy, safe, and secure. People are more likely to hand over their money when they perceive the risk as minimal. It’s best to reassure potential customers with robust guarantees, a solid privacy policy, and secure payment procedures.

6. How well you articulate their most pressing concerns. To market effectively you must get into your prospects’ heads. Listen carefully (and social media forums and blogs make this very easy) to your target audiences’ expressed opinions and feelings – particularly as they relate to your products or services – and be sure to address them directly. Research the marketplace to discover new trends and golden opportunities that you can leverage to benefit your business.

Most importantly – especially in the social media marketing environment – remember that the superior online and offline marketing happens when entrepreneurs are willing to put themselves out there and build genuine human connections. Social media marketing is not about quantity; it’s about quality. It is not just about long lists of “followers.” Rather, it begins with a sincere desire to grow and nourish genuine relationships and doing whatever it takes to ensure they happen. If you do this, the money will follow.

Turning Strangers Into True Friends and Fans

2010-09-15T09:21:00.002+08:00

Turning Strangers Into True Friends and Fans

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you”. Dale Carnegie

Even though social media sites make it much easier to develop connections – a cornerstone principle for all sound marketing systems – cyberspace “followers” are not the same as cyberspace “friends.”

If your ultimate goal is to use social media marketing sites to grow your business, then it’s imperative that you turn followers into real friends – and that requires a genuine connection.

No matter how tempting it is, don’t do the opposite and mistake illusion for reality. Go the extra mile and do what’s necessary to strengthen, not weaken, the “human bond.”

How Do You Turn Strangers Into True Friends and Fans?

First realize this is not an event but a committed process of building relationships and rapport with your targeted audience… one which helps them to know, like and trust you. When done correctly, it provides the opportunity for online business owners to achieve their ultimate objective of acquiring and retaining loyal and profitable customers.

For some of you, the conversion “journey” will be a straight and speedy highway directly to a sale … but the vast majority must be prepared to take a slower, more methodical route.

In order to achieve this, you’ll need to create an online environment that makes your audience feel welcomed in a warm and sincere way and makes it easy to take action.

It’s similar to inviting people to your homes. I’m sure that most of you greet your guests at the door with a broad smile, handshake or hug; offer them something to drink or eat; suggest they sit in the most comfortable chair; etc.
You don’t bombard them with stories about how great you are; ask them to lend you money or borrow their car or leave them on their own to wander aimlessly around your house. This may seem like a far-fetched illustration, but hopefully, you get the idea.

Here are just some of the ways you can transform your followers into genuine friends…

• Acknowledge personal details – “ping” them on their birthdays, ask about their families and share stories about your own, offer to help them with a personal problem, etc.

• Discover the topics your followers are passionate about and mention or discuss them in your online conversations

• Provide them with warm introductions to likeminded friends and colleagues

• “Re-tweet” their “tweets” (when appropriate)

• Comment on their Facebook status

• Mention them in your blog posts and link back to their sites.

Once again, social media marketers who have with the right mindset, recognize that it’s not about numbers – it’s about people. And if you help enough of them get what they want, you’ll get what you want as well.

And remember that once you start developing your list of true fans, treat them like gold as they will not only continue to buy from you but will refer others as well.

7 Simple Productivity Tools

2010-09-15T09:16:00.001+08:00

Here are 7 simple but effective productivity tools that can help
you save time and get things done:

1) Your Planner

Of all your productivity tools, your planner is one of the most
important ones, because it's something that you'll use every day to
get things done.

Productivity often comes down to having a clear system to
capture, organize, prioritize, plan and take action on all the
projects, tasks and activities that you need to get done each day.

A good planner can make a big difference in your results, but
even a simple blank notebook can do wonders if you're used to
keeping everything in your head.

If you want a proven software planner for Windows that can help
you get organized and take control of your time, you'll want to
check out Achieve Planner:

2) Dry Erase Calendar

You may also find it helpful to buy a large dry erase calendar
and hang it in a prominent location in your home or office.

A wall in your office, the kitchen or a frequently-traveled
hallway are good locations.

On this calendar, you can mark down important activities and
commitments for all members of the family.

For example, you can record your kids' activities, your own
meetings, doctor and dentist appointments, special functions,
etc. You can plan a week ahead of time, or even a whole month at
a time.

After each event has passed, erase it so you have a clear,
at-a-glance view of the things coming up next.

3) A Password Manager

If you use a web browser and need to keep track of passwords for
different websites (who doesn't?), then a password manager can be a
BIG time saver.

In case you are not familiar with this kind of software, it's a
tool that helps you keep track of your online passwords so you
don't have to remember them off the top of your head or use silly
little passwords that are easy to crack.

The best password managers even auto-fill the login forms for
you so you don't even have to type the passwords yourself.
A very popular and well-known password manager is RoboForm:

4) Reminders and Alarms

Many of the email, planning and organization software programs
available today offer great little settings that can remind you of
important activities.

You can schedule everything from birthday and anniversary
reminders to notes of encouragement for yourself!

Or, you can use a reminder service. There are also reminder
services out there that are absolutely free to use. You simply sign
up for a free account, set the dates and activities you want to be
reminded about, and they will send an email notification on the
date and time you specify.

This is a handy tool worth using if you need help remembering
activities and special occasions.

One popular service is www.MemoToMe.com; or try an internet
search for "reminder service."

5) "Text Replacement" Utilities

This is another little productivity tool that can save you a lot
of time and effort. It works great for common email replies,
signatures, quotes and lots of other boilerplate text that you may
need to type.

I recommend that you check out, Direct Access which reduces time
consuming, repetitive tasks through the use of abbreviations for
text replacement and application launching.

6) Outsourcing Services

If your daily schedule is packed full of chores and obligations
that you can't seem to pare down or delegate, consider outsourcing
some of them to individuals or companies that can help.

For example, if you find that you spend a lot of time nagging
your spouse to do the yard work (or you're forced to do it yourself
and it poses a real drain on your time and energy), call a few
local landscaping companies and check out their rates.

Do the same for housecleaning services, dog walkers, grocery
delivery services, and more.

You might think these services are too expensive, but you'd be
surprised at how inexpensive they CAN be.

Of course, you're going to have to decide if the costs are worth
the extra time you get by using these services. It all depends on
your budget and time commitments.

You might also consider a 'virtual assistant' to help you with
errands and other computer-related busywork.

7) Organizational Tools

If you spend a lot of time hunting for things you need because
you're swimming in a sea of clutter, consider investing in a few
good organizational systems and tools.

Once again, this probably will involve some extra expense at
first, but the extra organization and peace of mind may well be
worth it.

All of these tools may seem overly simple, but don't be
fooled! They can go a long way toward helping you save time,
be more productive and balance your life activities.

The "Acid Test" of Listening

2010-09-15T09:12:00.001+08:00

The "Acid Test" of Listening

Paraphrase Your Customer's Words

The customer is only sure that you have been listening when you paraphrase what the prospect has said and feed it back in your own words. This is where the rubber meets the road in effective listening. This is where you demonstrate in no uncertain terms to the prospect that your listening has been real and sincere. This is where you show the prospect that you were paying complete attention to what he or she was saying. Paraphrasing is how you prove it.

Question for Clarification

When the prospect has finished explaining his or her situation to you, and you have paused, and then questioned for clarification, you paraphrase the prospects primary thoughts and concerns, and feed them back to him or her in your own words.

Use the Right Words

For example, you might say, "Let me make sure I understand exactly what you are saying. It sounds to me like you are concerned about two things more than anything else, and that in the past you have had a couple of experiences that have made you very careful in approaching a decision of this kind."

Feed it Back Accurately

You then go on to feed back to the prospect exactly what he or she has told you, pausing and questioning for clarification as you go, until the customer says words to the effect of, "Yes, that's it! You've got it exactly."

Earn the Right to Sell

Only when you and the customer completed a thorough "examination" and have mutually agreed on the "diagnosis" you are in a position to begin talking to the customer about your product or service. In general terms, this means that you can not pull out your brochures and price lists and begin telling the customer how your product or service can solve his problems or achieve his goals until about seventy percent of the way through the sales conversation. Until then, you have not yet earned the right. Until then, you don't even know enough to begin an intelligent presentation without embarrassing yourself.

Be a Good Listener

The more and better you listen, the more and better people will like you, trust you and want to do business with you. The more they will want to get involved with you as a person and the more popular you will be with them. Excellent listeners are welcome everywhere, in every walk of life, and they eventually and ultimately arrive at the top of their fields.

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, remember that your first job in the sale is to get the customer to like you and believe that you understand his situation. Paraphrasing is the way you accomplish this.

Second, be sure that the customer agrees with you completely when you feed back his concerns to him. Only then can you really start selling.

The Three Ps of Marketing Operations

2010-05-19T12:42:00.002+08:00

The Three Ps of Marketing Operations

Marketing performance measurement and management (MPM) remains among the top-three priorities for chief marketing officers and VPs of marketing, CEOs, COOs, and CFOs, according to the ninth annual MPM study from VisionEdge Marketing.

The findings reveal that Marketing as a function knows what it needs to do and has established mechanisms for MPM, but many organizations remain challenged by the lack of the following: systems and issues associated with data collection, key performance-management processes, well-defined metrics, and reporting systems.

Those challenges create a cascade effect that impedes Marketing from what it ought to do (effectiveness). So when Marketing instead focuses on what can be done, it may not be working on the things that would enable it to adequately contribute to the business, hence reducing marketing return on investment.

A solid MPM practice optimizes marketing activities, thereby making measurement more relevant and allocating marketing resources more appropriately.

One step that goes a long way toward enabling MPM is to operationalize Marketing. Creating a marketing-operations function ties analysis with performance management.

For Marketing to fully achieve MPM maturity—or even take it to the next level—the role of, and skills within, the marketing-operations function at a minimum needs to address three Ps: planning, process, and performance management.

Marketing Operations Defined

Adding dedicated resources to a marketing organization by creating a marketing-operations role is essential to improving effectiveness and efficiency. Marketing-operations personnel specialize in performance management, which includes data, analytics and measurement, financial management, strategic planning, marketing-resource management, and marketing-skills assessment and development.

As the role has evolved, it has come to encompass several responsibilities, including these:

1. Defining and managing systems and tools
2. Developing and implementing metrics, infrastructure, and business processes
3. Establishing and communicating best-practices
4. Managing the overall marketing budget and budgeting process
5. Identifying and deploying technology to support performance measurement and reporting

A marketing-operations function creates a competency center that is committed to supporting performance management.

It is the marketing-operations function that focuses on how Marketing should be supporting the business and developing and implementing the processes, systems, tools, and skills development necessary to link Marketing to business outcomes, track and report results, and suggest improvement.

Marketing operations builds the processes and manages the systems needed to implement MPM.

The State of Marketing Operations

Although many organizations recognize the importance of Marketing Operations, the 2010 annual MPM study found a decline in the number of people being assigned to the function.

For example, in the 2009 MPM study, 80% of respondents indicated a marketing-operations function consisting of a team or dedicated person. Only 66% of respondents in the 2010 study indicated that they had a marketing-operations function at all.

An additional 5% indicated they were creating a marketing-operations function. And a little more than one-third of respondents reported having no plans to create a separate marketing-operations role or seeing any need for the function.

The 2009 study found that the marketing-operations function was underused; that was a recurring theme in the 2010 study. A key takeaway: Marketing Operations is not being used to its full potential; it is not playing a broader, more strategic role by helping to examine and address how to best facilitate performance management.

The results from this year's study suggest that although improvements related to analytics have been made, efforts have concentrated more on budget management, market research, and data management than on performance measurement and management.
Moving forward, marketing organizations should build capabilities with their operational staff that better support MPM as a whole rather than simply focusing on analysis.

Getting Value From Marketing Operations

Research suggests that linking marketing objectives, programs, activities, and results to the business and creating and executing consistently on MPM practices remain challenges for most marketing organizations. That is to be expected, considering where most marketing organizations are with regard to their maturity in employing MPM.

Even though Marketing has improved its ability to manage metrics, its ability to manage performance remains elusive:

• Less than 15% of respondents now rate Marketing as being completely effective, compared with 30% in 2009.
• Most respondents (78%) indicated that they are only somewhat or marginally effective.
• The ineffective proportion increased slightly, from 8% in 2009 to just more than 10% in 2010.

That decline indicates that any gains in communicating value to the business that Marketing has been able to make are at risk.

A primary reason Marketing is not as effective and efficient as it could be is the lack of adequate metrics, which would improve marketing performance. Many executives and marketing professionals remain dissatisfied with data analytics, measurement, and process skills within the marketing discipline.

Why? Because, for many organizations, Marketing still lacks the systems, practices, and capabilities to measure what matters.

In 2009, 19% of marketers indicated that Marketing doesn't leverage MPM best-practices. Less than one-fifth of respondents were satisfied with their MPM practices.

In general, study participants are not satisfied with Marketing's processes and ability to set performance targets, develop metrics, and measure—the areas where a marketing-operations function can make a difference.

Putting the Three Ps Into Practice

The following three Ps—process, performance management, and planning—provide a foundation on which to build a marketing-operations function.

1. Process

The American Marketing Association defines marketing as "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large." Key to the definition is the reference to a set of processes.

A performance-driven marketing organization needs 10 essential processes:

1. Market intelligence and customer insight
2. Planning
3. Budgeting
4. Market asset development and management
5. Performance measurement, management, and reporting
6. Metrics and performance target-setting and benchmarking
7. Auditing
8. Data management and collection
9. Professional-development processes
10. Infrastructure management

The best-in-class marketing-operations functions should focus on developing, managing, and optimizing those processes to enable the marketing organization to improve performance.

2. Performance management

MPM is the process of analyzing and improving both the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing through a framework of metrics that monitors Marketing's contribution to business goals.

Although it is the responsibility of every marketing professional to engage in performance management, Marketing Operations plays a pivotal role.
It is the marketing-operations function that governs the process and provides the data, analysis, systems, and tools that enable Marketing to link its initiatives to the business and then monitor and report on performance through a marketing dashboard.

Properly developed and deployed dashboards give the performance-driven marketing organization an advantage over competitors that are still operating with little or no essential data, analytics, or performance standards.

3. Planning

The point of any marketing plan is to identify the initiatives, strategies, tactics, and activities that the marketing organization will deploy to help the organization succeed.

Therefore, a key part of the marketing planning process is to have a clear road map to demonstrate how Marketing is moving the needle for the organization. That requires clearly linking Marketing's objectives, strategies, programs, and tactics back to business outcomes.

Doing so requires the marketing-operations function to interface with the organization's finance, sales, service, product, and management players; that interaction is vital to capturing the business outcomes, clarifying which ones Marketing is expected to influence, and defining the corresponding key performance indicators (KPIs).

* * *
Marketing organizations that have dedicated resources for the marketing-operations function ensure that the rest of the marketing organization adopts and implements performance-management best-practices to positively affect their organization's business outcomes.

They enable Marketing to become a performance-driven team and provide the processes, performance management, and planning skills, tools, and systems that empower Marketing to demonstrate value and be more effective and efficient.
By creating or expanding the marketing-operations role and skill set to include performance-targeting skills, process and technology optimization, and strategic capabilities to drive change, Marketing can reach the next step in its performance-management journey.

The bottom line: Marketing Operations facilitates a much better return on marketing investments.

7 Time-Saving Productivity Tools

2010-05-18T09:06:00.001+08:00

The Principle of the Objective

2010-05-16T11:56:00.001+08:00

The Principle of the Objective

Learn from the Lessons of History

The concepts of military strategy have been studied and written about for more than 4,000 years, going back to the early works of General Sun-Tzu in China more than 2,000 years BC. These principles of strategy that have been developed and perfected over the centuries have direct applications and implications for strategic thinking, both personally and corporately.

Decide In Advance What You Want

The most important military principle is the Principle of the Objective. This principle requires that you decide in advance exactly what it is that you are trying to accomplish. What exactly is your objective? In my experience, fully 80% of all problems in personal and corporate life come from a lack of clarity with regard to objectives and goals.

Clarity Is Critical

Clarity of objective precedes all other elements in strategic thinking. Here are some questions that you can use over and over again to focus and clarify your objectives. The first question is, "What am I trying to do?" The second question is, "How am I trying to do it?" The third question is, "What are my assumptions?" And the fourth question is, "What if my assumptions were wrong?"

Question Your Assumptions

Having the courage to ask these questions, and to question your assumptions, both spoken and unspoken, is a key mark of the superior person. Sometimes individuals avoid questioning their assumptions for fear that they will have to change their minds or do something other than what they started out to do. However, false assumptions lie at the root of almost every failure. The only way that you can root out these wrong assumptions is by carefully analyzing them and discussing them, and then by demanding proof or evidence that these assumptions are still valid.

Project Forward In Your Mind

Another method for clarifying your objectives is for you to project forward and look backward. In other words, imagine that you have already achieved the objective that you are working toward. Project yourself forward in your mind and then look back to the present day, to the present moment. What do you see? What changes could you make looking back from this imaginary perspective of hindsight? This is a key peak performance thinking technique.

Determine Why You Want It

The final part of clarifying your objectives revolves around your identifying the reasons why you want to achieve this objective in the first place. Why is it important? Is it still as important as when you started off? Is this objective more important than any other objective that you could be working on? It is essential that you be clear about the answers to these questions.

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do immediately to apply the principle of the objective to your personal and business life:

First, take out a piece of paper and answer the question: "What am I trying to do?" What are your goals? What are your objectives? Why are you doing what you are doing in the first place? Is this the very best use of your time and energy?

Second, question your assumptions. What things are you assuming are true about yourself, the people around you and the situation? What if one of these assumptions turned out to be false? What changes would you have to make if you found that your most cherished assumptions were not based on reality, or were contradicted by facts?

Product Creation: Avoid this 5 mistakes to increase information product sales.

2010-05-15T14:01:00.001+08:00

Have you ever created an information product- say a home study or membership program, an e-book or online workshop that didn’t sell? I have. Are you surprised?

You see when I first decided to add information products to my business years ago I made the same rookie mistakes I see many small and solo business owners making today. Yet abandoning the idea was not an option since creating information products is still the best way to sell your knowledge and expertise to a large audience and create multiple streams of income that don’t involve selling your time at an hourly rate.

I learned from my mistakes and with the help of some awesome mentors I ended up creating multiple home study and membership programs that are highly successful. And I’ve helped many clients do the same. So I’d like to share the mistakes you need to avoid if you don’t want to struggle like I did years ago.

Mistake #1: Deciding what people want without knowing what they want.

So many people have a wonderful idea and immediately get to work creating an information product based on that idea. They decide it’s what people need. The problem is that clients buy what they want, not what they need. Sometimes they don’t even know what they need. To discover what they really want a little simple keyword and competitor research can go a long way and save you a ton of time, frustration and lost sales.

Mistake #2: No proven marketing system

Even if you have the best home study course or e-book ever written, if no one knows about it you’ll have no sales and nothing could be more discouraging after all the hard work you put in.

You need to have all of your marketing materials written, your e-mail marketing and affiliate programs in place, and your traffic generation system automated as much as possible before you start selling. Once I developed these systems, selling my products became so much easier and regularly produces a steady stream of leads and sales.

Mistake #3 Not having a sales page that converts buyers

Imagine that you’ve finally finished your product, you’ve got your marketing system in place and you can see that you’re getting people to your sales page—but only a few are buying. Writing curiosity-building or benefit-laden headlines and powerful content that includes clear results buyers can expect from your product, legitimate testimonials and an ironclad guarantee will go a long way toward improving your sales conversion. Including video will make a big difference because you can show visitors how and why you’re passionate about your product.

Mistake #4 Not giving more value than the price implies

People tend to buy online when they really want a solution to a problem and they see your product as that solution. By adding more components to your product, such as worksheets, audios, videos or checklists and by adding bonuses the perceived value goes beyond the price you’re charging. And of course your price has to be right in terms of what the buyer perceives the value to be. If the price is perceived as too high you won’t get many sales. If it’s too low, your product may be perceived as inferior. Do some research to find the pricing on similar products to give you a benchmark.

Mistake #5 Not even starting because you’re afraid it’s too hard

You can create an information product in anywhere from one week to 60 days, tops. And it can produce ongoing sales for months or years. Plus it can build your expert status and be the foundation for other programs. In other words you can leverage the content you create and use it in other types of programs and services. So not creating one actually ends up being harder because it keeps you stuck selling your time hour by hour and it keeps you at survival level.

Are You Truly Excited About What You Sell

2010-05-09T22:40:00.003+08:00

Are You Truly Excited About What You Sell

We all know that sales are really all about "Closing The Sale". There is not a salesperson alive who does not use a variety of techniques to help them be successful with customers. However, I believe passion is the most underrated and underutilised sales tool in our arsenal because it is too hard to measure and no one has found an effective way to teach it.

Passion is an effective sales tool because it isn't artificial and can't be faked for a long period of time. It is displayed in people who genuinely care and are willing to take the time to serve their clients in whatever manner is necessary.

Passion in sales is evident when the coach takes the time to listen to their prospect and attempts to really understand what it is they are looking for. It is displayed not only in the questions that are asked, but also in the tone of voice and body language that is used and the follow-up that is demonstrated after the sales call. Coaches who have passion are able to create long-term profitable relationships with their customers. They also routinely benefit from referrals by their existing clients and, on many occasions, these prospects come to them ready to buy.

Before you rush out to practice your body language and tone of voice in an attempt to find passion, let me add the secret ingredient: heart. Passion comes from a genuine belief of wanting to help the client in both good times and bad.

Passion can actually be measured in a couple of ways. Begin by asking yourself this simple question: "When the day is over and my clients are reflecting back on the people they've interacted with and the activities they've done, do they think of me in a positive light that contributed to them having a good day?" It is important to consider whether your clients truly believe you are helping improve their day and their business. Another assessment tool is found in analysing the number of referrals you get. Referrals are an accurate measurement of how your clients view you. If they honestly believe in you, they recommend you to others

Passion in sales is underrated. Therefore, your ability to genuinely care about your clients, to show an interest in them, and to serve them will determine your long-term business success.

2010-05-09T22:16:00.001+08:00

Create Your Personal Strategic Plan
By Brian Tracy

Your success in life is determined, to a large extent by your ability to think, plan, decide, and take action. The stronger your skills are in each of these areas, the faster you will achieve your goals and the happier you will be with your life and career. Personal strategic planning is the tool that takes you from wherever you are to wherever you want to go.

Difference between Train and Plane

The difference between people who use strategic planning to organize and direct their lives and those who do not is like the difference between taking a train and taking a plane. Both will get you from point A to point B, but the plane—personal strategic planning—will get you there much faster and without frequent stops.

Systematic Way of Thinking

Skill in personal strategic planning is not something you are born with, like eye color or perfect pitch. It is a systematic way of thinking and acting and is, therefore, something you can learn, like riding a bike or changing a tire. With practice, you can master the many different elements that make up this key skill, and you will get into the rhythm of thinking and acting strategically for the rest of your life. When you do acquire rhythm, you will realize extraordinary results. Your life and career will take off, and the sky is truly the limit.

Save Time and Money

Why is strategic planning and thinking so helpful? The answer is simple: it saves you an enormous amount of time and money. When you review and analyze key strategic questions of concepts of your career or business, you find yourself focusing on the critical tasks necessary to achieve your goals. At the same time, you stop doing those things that keep you from achieving success. You do more of the right things and fewer things that get and keep you off track. You set performance goals for people and projects. You become skilled at measuring and tracking results. You move into the express lane in both work and life.

Design Your Life and Career

Your goals in personal strategic planning are similar. The key difference is that rather than improving your return on equity, your planning efforts will allow you to realize a greater return on energy. You might say that personal strategic planning will increase your return on life. A business measures its equity in terms of financial capital. On the other hand, you measure your personal equity in terms of your own human capital. Your personal equity consists of the physical, emotional, and mental energies you are able to invest in your career. Set a goal of achieving the very highest return possible on the investment of your energies.

Critical Question

Ask yourself this critical question: What is it that I do especially well? Examine the areas where you excel or are clearly superior to others in your field. You need to know what you can claim as your personal competitive advantage. This is the lifeblood of personal strategic planning. Your success is tied directly to how excellent you become at the most important part of your work.

Action Exercise

Clarify your career or business vision. What could your ideal career or business look like? What could you be doing most of the time? How much would you be earning? What kind of people would you be working with? What level of responsibility would you have? What kind of industry would you be in?

THE 10 POWERFUL MUSTS IN MARKETING

2010-05-09T22:04:00.002+08:00

THE 10 POWERFUL MUSTS IN MARKETING
By Kevin Thomas

Whenever I meet a Business Owner or an Entrepreneur the first question I ask is "how does your Marketing measure up"? Their usual response is that their Marketing Sucks! How about yours? If you are like most, Marketing is the last thing that you work on in your business. You are either doing the technical part of your business or you are putting out fires. You usually don't have a clear plan or strategy on how to set up a successful Marketing initiative in your organization. Most of the time, we are being reactive instead of proactive. We wait until business slows down and then we put a bunch of money into different media sources in hopes that business gets better. Typically, this doesn't work. But if it does, we don't measure it, to see what part of our message inspired our clients to come in the door or call us on the phone. If you would like to develop a Marketing Strategy that will give you awesome results, consistent traffic and more profits, I encourage you to read on. These are the 10 Powerful Musts that your Marketing Plan should have.

You must have 10 Marketing Strategies active at all time

Most companies have three or less strategies working for them and because of that their message doesn't reach their customers in enough time for it to stick. Researches show that a potential client must hear, see or experience your message 9 times or more before deciding to do business with you. Your website, your TV ad and your print advertising alone, isn't enough to drive the traffic that you need to make your business successful. I teach my clients how to determine the 10 affordable mediums that they can use to get their message out, so that they can attract more clients to them.

Your Marketing Message must address your target market and their interests directly
Your message must be focused.....like a laser beam on your target market. It must speak to their needs directly and clearly. For instance, an auto repair facility may communicate that they are the local experts for European automobiles. By doing this, they have separated themselves from every other repair facility in their area. Anyone who owns a European automobile now has a local expert that they can take their vehicle to.

Your Marketing Message must be consistent across all mediums you use
Many Business Owners are their own worst enemy. This is because they are communicating one message in one ad and another, somewhere else. We mentioned earlier that it takes nine or more impressions before someone makes a decision to purchase from you. If you are sending multiple messages, it will dilute your voice and cost you opportunities.

You must track all leads and know what Marketing Medium brought your prospect to contact you
There is an old saying, "What you measure you will manage". You must know what is working and what is not. If you are advertising somewhere that is delivering results, you want to stay there. If you are advertising somewhere that isn't giving results, drop it and put your money somewhere else. Most business owners have a general idea of what medium is bringing clients in but are not sure. You must track this area. It is as simple as asking a couple of questions or adding a box on your website that asks the client how they heard about you.

Your Marketing Message must be dramatically different from your competitors'
In my Companies, I am constantly watching, reading and listening to my competitors' marketing messages. Most of them look, sound and feel identical because they are put together by the advertising sales reps. They are not marketing experts. Their goal is to sell you space and get a commission......not to help you develop a marketing strategy. If you look at the newspaper ads for Car Dealerships, you will see exactly what I am talking about. Remember, "Same is Lame".

You must constantly be looking for ways to provide additional Products and Services to your target Market.
I call this recycling your customer. You must look for ways to get your customer to continue to spend money with you. Look at Wal-Mart. They started selling just household products and now they sell groceries, electronics, jewelry, etc. You can even get your oil changed, do your banking, get an eye exam or have your taxes prepared while you are there! What products and services compliment what you are currently selling? How can you add that to your existing operation? By doing this, you will add value to your current business model as well as become a one stop shop for your clients. This makes their life easier and it will increase your bottom line.

You must maintain a current database of your current and potential customers
It blows me away when I sit down with a client and they don't have an organized database of their clients. How can you stay in touch with them to share about the new promotions that you have going on? How can you follow up with them to see how the product that you sold them is working out for them? Without a database, you cannot. You must develop one so that you can remind them that you are still here and more importantly that you still care.

You must use strategies such as Guarantees and Testimonials to enhance your Marketing Message in all communications
People love testimonials and guarantees. This gives your potential client the warm and fuzzy feeling that they need to feel comfortable about doing business with you. If they read or see how your product or service has helped hundreds of people improve their lives, save money, time or increase their income, they are more likely to do business with you over your competitor. Your guarantees show the potential client how much confidence that you have in your product or service. Offering powerful guarantees such as warranties and full refunds, if not satisfied, proves to the consumer that there is no risk involved with doing business with you. If your competitor doesn't say these things, it may show that they are not willing to back up what they are selling.

Your Marketing Message must tell your prospect what to do next in making contact with you

After hearing your message, your prospect must be directed on how they should contact you. Should they email, call, write or come in? You cannot assume that they know, you must tell them. They will appreciate you for this.

You must communicate with past customers on a regular basis to ensure that they come back again and again.
The easiest sale is to those who have already done business with you. How are they going to remember you if you don 't communicate with them? I encourage my clients to stay in touch with their clients a minimum of 4 times per year. I advise them to stay away from big holidays such as Christmas and Easter because everyone sends cards during these times. Consider sending something on their birthday, the Fourth of July, New Years Day and Labor Day. You will probably be the only person they receive a card from on any of these given days.

If you develop your Marketing plan using the 10 Powerful Musts, you will increase your business with both new clients as well as returning clients. You will also see an increase in referrals to your business. The best businesses understand that marketing is the most important part of their business because without customers you have no business.

So what are you going to do next?

Well, you can go down to your local college and sign up for a Marketing course if you have the time to do so. Most business owners don 't. You can read a bunch of books and extract the principles outlined, but that takes time and disciple. Or you can hire a Marketing Coach who will help you develop the strategies that we have outlined. By doing so you enjoy the privilege of having your customer pipeline filled at all times.

Never give-up

2010-04-21T11:53:00.000+08:00

Create Your Daily Personal Growth Schedule

2010-02-05T22:30:00.001+08:00

Create Your Daily Personal Growth Schedule

There are seven disciplines you must develop if you want to achieve all that is possible for you. You can learn these disciplines through practice and repetition until they become automatic.

Goal Setting

Every morning, take three to five minutes to write out your top goals in the present tense. Get a spiral notebook for this purpose. By writing out your ten goals at the beginning of each day, you will program them deep into your subconscious mind.

This daily goal writing will activate your mental powers. It will stimulate your mind and make you more alert. Throughout the day, you will see opportunities and possibilities to move more rapidly toward your goals.

Planning and Organizing

Take a few minutes, preferably the night before, to plan out every activity of the coming day. Always work from a list. Always think on paper. This is one of the most powerful and important disciplines of all for high performance.
Concentration on your Highest-Value Activities
Your ability to work single-mindedly on your most important task will contribute as much to your success as any other discipline you can develop.

Exercise and Proper Nutrition

Your health is more important than anything else. By disciplining yourself to exercise regularly and to eat carefully, you will promote the highest possible levels of health and fitness throughout your life.

Learning and Growth

Your mind is like a muscle. If you don't use it, you lose it. Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field.

Time for Important People in Your Life

Relationships are everything. Be sure that in climbing the ladder of success, you do not find it leaning against the wrong building. Build time for your relationships into every day, no matter how busy you get.

Time for Important People in Your Life

These seven disciplines will ensure that you perform at the highest level and get the greatest satisfaction and results from everything you do. Study these seven disciplines and then make a plan for how you can incorporate each of them into your daily life.

8 Signs You Might Be Boring Someone

2010-02-02T22:47:00.001+08:00

8 Signs You Might Be Boring Someone

A recent Psychology Today article by Gretchen Rubin provides a list of clues that you might be boring someone during a conversation. I’ve certainly been trapped in conversations with people who didn’t understand how to pick up on subtle clues that their long narrative about a weird dream they had or a particularly awesome golf game they played were boring the heck out of me — and just the same, I’m sure I’ve been oblivious to those signs in others, as well. Have you been on the giving or receiving end of any of these signs?

1. Repeated, perfunctory responses.
A person who repeats, “Oh really? Wow. Oh really? Interesting.” isn’t particularly engaged.

2. Simple questions. People who are bored ask simple questions.
“When did you move?” “Where did you go?” People who are interested ask more complicated questions that show curiosity, not mere politeness.

3. Interruption. Although it sounds rude, interruption is actually a good sign, I think. It means a person is bursting to say something, and that shows interest. Similarly…

4. Request for clarification. A person who is sincerely interested in what you’re saying will ask you to elaborate or to explain. “What does that term mean?” “When exactly did that happen?” “Then what did he say?” are the kinds of questions that show that someone is trying closely to follow what you’re saying.

5. Imbalance of talking time. I suspect that many people fondly suppose that they usually do eighty percent of the talking because people find them fascinating. Sometimes, it’s true, a discussion involves a huge download of information desired by the listener; that’s a very satisfying kind of conversation. In general, though, people who are interested in a subject have things to say themselves; they want to add their own opinions, information, and experiences. If they aren’t doing that, they’re probably keeping quiet in the hopes that the conversation will end faster. Or maybe you just aren’t letting them get a word in — recently I was talking to someone who, though fascinating, didn’t want to let me contribute to the conversation. I enjoyed it, but not as much as if I’d been able to talk, too.

6. Abrupt changes in topic. If you’re talking to someone about, say, the life of Winston Churchill (I have a tendency to dwell at length on this particular subject), and all of a sudden the other person says, “So how are your kids?”, it’s a sign that he or she isn’t very interested or perhaps not listening at all. When someone makes this kind of switch, I have to fight the urge not to drag the topic back to what I want to talk about – but the fact that someone has introduced a completely different subject is a sure sign that the subject is not engaging.

7. Body position. People with a good connection generally turn to face each other. A person who is partially turned away isn’t fully embracing the conversation. Along the same lines, if you’re a speaker trying to figure out if an audience is interested in what you’re saying:

8. Audience posture. Back in 1885, Sir Francis Galton wrote a paper called “The Measurement of Fidget.” He determined that people slouch and lean when bored, so a speaker can measure the boredom of an audience by seeing how far from vertically upright they are. Also, attentive people fidget less; bored people fidget more. An audience that’s sitting still and upright is interested, while an audience that’s horizontal and squirmy is bored.

The article goes on to list a number of topics which are almost universally boring — so if you find yourself delving into one of these, be sure and gauge your listener for any of the above signs of disengagement!

1. A dream.
2. The recent changes in your child’s nap schedule.
3. The route you took to get here.
4. An excellent meal you once had at a restaurant.
5. The latest additions to your wine cellar.
6. An account of your last golf game.

Competition Brings Out The Best

2010-02-02T22:44:00.001+08:00

Competition Brings Out The Best
By Brian Tracy

In a free market society like the U.S., there is a continuous competition for talent and skill. Every business knows that the critical constraint on its ability to grow is competent to people who can get results. Like cream rising to the top, people who can do a good job are hired sooner, paid more, and promoted faster. People who are not competent or motivated are not. No laws can change this. They can only mask it temporarily.

Compassion or Condescension

Compassion can quickly become condescension. Minority groups can become victims of what President George Bush called “the soft bigotry of reduced expectations.” People begin to judge them by lower standards and expect less of them in comparison with others. This is completely unacceptable in America. The way to bring the best out of people is by challenging them-by setting high standards, by demanding their “best game.”

A System Gone Astray

The U.S. education system, once the best in the world (and still the best at the University level), has become a tragedy and a trap for more young people caught in it and unable to escape. In 1947, 97 percent of Americans were literate, reading several books a year, and often each month. By 2004, fully 47 percent of Americans could not read above the seventh grade level. People who have not mastered the three R's by the time they leave school are destined to lifetimes of low income, under achievement, and wasted potential.

"Reach Your Maximum Level of Achievement"

While many people have "dreams and aspirations" about how they want their futures to turn out, very few people actually have a plan to get there. No matter what your dreams and aspirations are, one thing is certain: To achieve them, you must have the right tools to guarantee your success.

Failing Schools

Today, African American students test at four grade levels below white and Asian students in the same schools. Even worse, they are not allowed to escape their failing schools, especially in the inner cities. They are trapped into lifetimes of below-average incomes, insecurity, and eventually envy, resentment, and feelings of victim-hood.

Enter the Unions

The first teachers union was formed in the 1950's. In a few years, driven by expediency, the focus of teaching shifted from student achievement to teacher pay and benefits. As Albert Schanker, head of the American Teachers Federation, once said, “When the children start paying union dues, then we'll start caring about the children. ”

Competition is Key

The Economist magazine wrote on June 11, 2005, “The schools the poorest Americans attend have been getting worse rather than better.” This is partly a problem of resources, to be sure. But it is even more a problem of bad ideas. One poll of 900 professors of education found that 64 percent of them thought that schools should avoid competition. The only way to reverse the educational system is to change the structure of incentives in such a way that academic excellence is pursued and rewarded. Without competition, there is no motivation to improve.

Action Exercise

Get involved in your children's education, and whenever possible, vote for the betterment of the educational system.

Are entrepreneurs born or made?

2010-01-30T23:44:00.001+08:00

Are entrepreneurs born or made?
By Ian Mount

When Bill Gates's children become adults, they'll probably launch their own businesses.

And not just because of their father's example. Entrepreneurial tendencies -- including the ability to recognize business opportunities -- are heavily influenced by genetic factors, according to a study co-directed by Scott Shane, a professor of entrepreneurial studies at Case Western Reserve University.
Shane and his fellow researchers compared the entrepreneurial activity of 870 pairs of identical twins -- who share 100% of their genes -- and 857 pairs of same-sex fraternal twins -- who share 50% -- to see how much of entrepreneurial behavior is genetic and how much is environmental.

The mathematics behind quantitative genetic modeling are rather complicated, but the upshot was fairly straightforward: Entrepreneurs, the researchers concluded, are about 40% born and 60% made. Ten to 15 years from now, genetically advantaged entrepreneurs might be identified through DNA testing or psychological surveys, Shane says.

Some academics go further: University of Cambridge clinical neuropsychology professor Barbara Sahakian, lead author of a recent study on entrepreneurial risk taking published in Nature, says that drugs used to manipulate dopamine levels might be employed to enhance entrepreneurship.

"Nature" theories like these don't sit well with professionals in the booming "nurture" field of entrepreneurship education. (The number of undergraduate majors, minors and certificates offered in entrepreneurship rose from 104 in 1975 to more than 500 in 2006, according to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a Kansas City, Mo., think tank.)

For Heidi Neck, a professor of entrepreneurial studies at Babson College, nature studies hinder the democratization of entrepreneurship.
"If entrepreneurship is the path to economic development, to the American dream and out of recession, I think it's dangerous to say it's hereditary," Neck says.
Others are even more adamant in their distaste.

"Even if you were able to identify specific genes, then what would you do -- inject them into people who lack them?" asks Donald F. Kuratko, executive director of the Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation at Indiana University. The very idea, Kuratko says, is reminiscent of the Nazis' World War II eugenics program.
There is more than academic turf at stake. Startups are responsible for more than a third of all new jobs created in the U.S., and firms less than five years old accounted for all net job growth between 1980 and 2005, according to the Kauffman Foundation.

For Bo Fishback, vice president of entrepreneurship at the foundation, entrepreneur gene studies are largely curiosities. What's most important for Fishback is opening the possibility of entrepreneurship to more people. Shane himself suggests that psychological surveys based on his findings could be used to identify potential entrepreneurs at a young age so they could be exposed to opportunity early, helping, for example, to turn a future entrepreneurial gang leader into a budding business founder.

Exposure seems to have an effect: A recent study at Munich's Ludwig Maximilians University found that a compulsory entrepreneurship course led about 18% of students who hadn't planned to launch a company to reconsider. The class also vastly increased the students' confidence that they knew what was necessary to start a business.

This confidence seems warranted in light of a 2006 study led by Yale University economics professor Dean Karlan, which focused on a banking program for female microentrepreneurs in a Peruvian village and determined that the women who took business-training classes had 16% higher sales than those who didn't.
Educators are not surprised by such findings. "I do believe that you can teach entrepreneurship skills," says Randy Komisar, a partner at Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who teaches at Stanford University. Classes, he observes, give students basic tools and reinforce the desire to take risks and question the status quo.

But he doesn't totally dismiss nature's role. "For someone without aptitude, I don't think those things can be taught," he says. "I can't make a librarian into a Broadway performer."

The debate will probably heat up soon. A book by Shane and his colleagues, Born Entrepreneurs, Born Leaders: How Your Genes Affect Your Work Life, is due from Oxford University Press in March 2010.

Change Your Definition of Marketing

2010-01-30T23:34:00.003+08:00

Change Your Definition of Marketing
By Dan Kennedy

In my 35 years working with business owners, entrepreneurs and big corporate clients on marketing, I've seen many different definitions of marketing govern peoples approaches to it, and unfortunately, most versions are narrow, limiting and--well--wrong. Marketing shouldn't just be a cog in the wheel or a link in the chain of moving prospects to buyers or products to market.

Of late, the entire U.S. economy has been weighed down by a massive over-supply of look-alike, do-alike, painfully ordinary businesses doing ordinary things in ordinary ways. About one-third are unnecessary duplicates.This column's space prohibits full discussion of everything marketing is and isn't, should and shouldn't be. But one of the best functions of marketing has always been business reinvention, and there's never been a better or more necessary time for that.

In No B.S. Ruthless Management of People and Profits, I tell the story of a Disney executive describing "the million dollar piece of gum"--how gum left on the ground might cost the company a million dollars. Walt originally included park cleanliness as a marketing function, not a cost of operations. He defined the core of good marketing as doing what you do so well and so uniquely that people can't resist telling others about you. Disneyreinvented the traditional amusement park. Initial reinventions included: single entry and exit rather than open design--forcing customers to exit through the main shopping area and all the souvenir stands, an innovation now replicated in the exit paths from individual rides and attractions within the parks; price per day vs. individual tickets for rides; and the aforementioned cleanliness.

Similarly, Howard Schultz reinvented the coffee shop as "the third place"--Starbucks--and is now trying to reinvent for the developing New Economy and "un-invent" some sins committed in his absence.

Aradical approach to innovation and marketing isn't restricted to big corporations--there are plenty of small businesses ahead of the curve. Let me tell you about a few of our Glazer-Kennedy Insider's Circle members who have reinvented the concept of fractional ownership.

Diana Coutu ofDiana's Gourmet Pizzeriain Winnipeg doubled her business' sales and size last year selling pizzas priced from $22 to $38, thanks to innovations not at all common to pizza places, including levels of membership with fees automatically charged to customers' credit cards every month (stabilizing income and locking in use in advance, thus protecting customers from competitors' seductions); multiple ways to take home the products--cooked and ready to eat, frozen and ready to heat, "from scratch" baking kits (for family fun nights), raw dough--and with comprehensive direct-to-customers marketing built around a newsletter and website.

Nigel Worralreinvented the business of renting out homes to Florida vacationers with different clubs, bundled excursion and adventure activities, and extraordinary marketing with an emphasis on the experience, not 'X' number of bedrooms plus a pool for 'Y' dollars a day, marketing--and his business is booming even as other Florida travel destinations cry about the recession.

Chris Hurn, CEO ofKennedy's All-American Barber Club, reinvented by combining a classic men's barber shop that offers straight razor shaves with a men's club atmosphere and different programs of membership--as opposed to cafeteria-style pricing.

In all these cases, marketing is not being used as a means of getting a customer or making a sale. Instead, it's in the context of dynamically changing the business itself and delivering an entirely different customer experience. With this comprehensive approach, the businesses thrive.

The hierarchy of income:
• Bottom is commodities.
• Next--products and services discussed in terms of features and benefits, provided by vendors and salespeople.
• Next--solutions to problems and fulfillment of unmet desires, provided by experts.
• At the top, exceptional experiences provided by experts in "categories of one."
Begin here: Question and be willing to throw out any and every industry norm, tradition, current belief, idea and practice now defining your business, as you advertise, market and operate it and as customers perceive it. Then search for opportunities to make your business something entirely different and more meaningful to the customer than just a provider of goods and services. Very, very, very few business owners are willing to engage in such radicalism. We have a term for them: multimillionaires.

Widely celebrated as "the millionaire maker," Dan Kennedy has a long record of taking entrepreneurs to 7-figure incomes. A serial entrepreneur directly influencing over 1 million business owners as a business coach, he's the author of the popular No B.S. series, including the forthcoming No B.S. Sales Success for The New Economy, accessible for free preview atwww.NoBSBooks.com.More information about Dan can be found atFreeGiftFrom.com/entrepreneurpress.

How to profit from customer complain

2010-01-30T23:26:00.002+08:00

How to profit from customer complaint
By Marie Moody

Obstinacy can push an entrepreneur to persevere when any sane person would quit. But obstinacy can also kill your business if it keeps you in denial.
Because I am obstinate, I pursued my dream of creating a premium pet-food company that sells what it claims to sell and not some unidentifiable substance in a dressed-up bag. Stella & Chewy's ingredients include organic fruits and vegetables and meats that are free of antibiotics and hormones.

Originally we packaged our foods in transparent bags. In fact, transparency became our guiding philosophy. Today we offer open plant tours, publish our meat sources and test every batch of food for salmonella and E. coli using codes that can match each bag to its lab result online.

To launch the company in 2003, I pounded the pavement, visiting every pet-food store in Manhattan -- where I lived then -- and some outside the city. By 2006 Stella & Chewy's was sold in 250 stores, mostly in New York City. In 2007 I moved the company to Muskego, Wis., where I opened a manufacturing plant. That year our revenues were almost $500,000.

But getting my product into stores was just the beginning: I then had to persuade pet owners to buy it. We were competing against much bigger pet-food companies whose monthly marketing budgets dwarfed our annual sales. So we invested in brochures and a Webs ite and even stood on sidewalks distributing samples. Eventually we developed a loyal following.

With more customers came more feedback -- much of which I dismissed. Your dog doesn't eat lamb? He's allergic to blueberries? You hate the name Stella & Chewy's? You're concerned about where the cows sleep? We responded diplomatically to these concerns. Still, my gut told me that I knew what was best for my company.
I was also fielding complaints about ice crystals on the food. Ice crystals form when the air temperature changes. Practically every frozen food item develops ice crystals by the time it hits the retail store because of slight temperature changes during transport. For this reason, most frozen foods are packaged in opaque bags or boxes. Studies have proved that ice crystals have little, if any, effect on either the quality or the taste of the food. Basically, there's nothing wrong with a little ice.

So I ignored the complaints. After all, I told myself, we were better than competitors that wouldn't even reveal their products. We weren't hiding anything.
In 2007, the popularity of frozen pet food soared after some of the bigger American pet-food manufacturers issued recalls. Some of their products had been contaminated by melamine, a chemical found in an ingredient many of those companies imported from China. Thousands of dogs and cats died from the tainted food, so consumers sought smaller pet-food vendors that they hoped would have better control over their ingredients. Suddenly we had more competition.

Our sales kept growing, but not as fast as those of our rivals. Retailers told me that consumers who were new to the frozen pet-food category -- crucial customers for sales growth -- were choosing products packaged in opaque bags. Hearing this over the phone from a store employee or from the occasional customer was one thing.
However, when I visited the stores and forced myself to consider my product objectively, I had to agree: The ice crystals undercut the look I wanted. The food didn't appear fresh; it looked as if a blizzard had hit the inside of the bag.
We switched to opaque bags and overhauled our in-plant freezers so that the food would freeze faster, resulting in smaller ice crystals. Customers responded: In 2009 Stella & Chewy's was sold in 2,500 stores across the country. Annual revenues should exceed $5 million this year.

Today we can afford to use consumer focus groups. It's tough to sit behind a one-way mirror and listen to people criticize the brand. "Is this a treat or a meal? Why no pictures of cats on the bag? Why does Stella [one of my dogs] look like a Cyclops on the logo?"

But now I take a deep breath and remember that the critics might just be right.

The Law of Reciprocity

2010-01-30T23:24:00.000+08:00

The Law of Reciprocity
By Brian Tracy

People have a deep subconscious need to reciprocate for anything that is done to or for them. The Law of Reciprocity is one of the most powerful of all determinants of human behavior. This is because nobody likes to feel that he or she is obligated to someone else. When someone does something nice for us, we want to repay that person, to reciprocate. We want to be even. Because of this, we seek an opportunity to do something nice in return. This law is the basis of the law of contract, as well as the glue that hold most human relationships together.

Concessions

The first party to make a concession is the party who wants the deal the most. You must therefore avoid being the first one to make a concession, even a small concession. Instead, be friendly and interested, but remain silent. The first person to make a concession will usually be the person who makes additional concessions, even without reciprocal concessions. Most purchasers and sellers are aware of this. They recognize that early concessions are a sign of eagerness and are prepared to take advantage of it. Be careful.

Equal or Greater

Every concession you make in a negotiation should be matched by an equal or greater concession from the other party. If the other party asks for a concession, you may give it, but never without asking for something else in return. If you don't request a reciprocal concession, the concession that you give will be considered to have no value and will not help as the negotiation proceeds. If a person asks for a better price, suggest that it might be possible but you will have to either decrease the quantity or lengthen the delivery dates. Even if the concession is of no cost or value to you, you must make it appear valuable and important to the other party or it will not help you in the negotiation.

Small Concessions lead to Large Concessions

Small concessions on small issues enable you to ask for large concessions on large issues. One of the very best negotiating strategies is to be willing to give something in order to get something. When you make every effort to appear reasonable by conceding on issues that are unimportant to you, you put yourself in an excellent position to request an equal or greater concession later.

Use Reciprocity to your Advantage

Use the reciprocity principle to your advantage. Before negotiating make a list of the things the other party might want and decide upon what concessions you are willing to give to get what you want. This preparation strengthens your negotiating ability considerably.

Action Exercise

Prepare your best price or offer before you begin. Then, think through your first "fallback" position and how far you are willing to go to make a deal. Prepare your final fallback position as well, along with the maximum you are willing to concede. This exercise of thinking through these issues in advance will make you a much better negotiator.

The Heart of the Sale

2010-01-30T23:21:00.000+08:00

The Heart of the Sale
By Brian Tracy

What is selling? In its simplest terms, selling is the process of persuading a person that your product or service is of greater value to him than the price you are asking for it. Our market society is based on the principles of freedom of choice and mutual benefit. Each party enters into a transaction when he feels that he will be better off as a result of the transaction than he would be without it.

Convince the Customer

For the customer to buy your particular product or service, he or she must be convinced, not only that is it the best choice of product or service available, but also that there is no better way for him to spend the equivalent sum of money that it costs. Your job as a salesperson is to convince the customer that these conditions exist and then to elicit a commitment from him to take action on your offer.

The Critical Factor: Risk

The critical factor in selling today is risk. Because of the continuous change, rapid obsolescence, and an uncertain economy, the risk of buying the wrong product or service has become greater than ever before. There are four main factors that contribute to the perception of risk in the mind and hear of the customer.

Size of the Sale

The first factor that contributes to risk is the size of the sale. The larger the scale, the more money involved, the greater the risk. If a person is buying a package of Lifesavers, the risk of satisfaction or dissatisfaction is insignificant. But if a person is buying a computer system for their company, the risk factor is magnified by hundreds of thousands of times. Whenever you are selling a product that has a high price on it, you must be aware that risk enters into the buyer's calculations immediately.

People Affected by the Decision

The second factor contributing to the perception of risk is the number of people who will be affected by the buying decision. Almost every complex buying decision involves several people. There are people who must use the product or service. There are people who must pay for the product or service. There are people who are dependent of the results expected from the product or service. If a person is extremely sensitive to the opinions of others, this factor alone can cause him or her to put off a buying decision.

Length of Life of the Product

The third factor contributing to the perception of risk is the length of life of the product. A product or service that, once installed, is meant to last for several years, generates the feeling of risk. The customer panics and thinks, "What if it doesn't work and I'm stuck with it."

Unfamiliarity

The fourth major risk factor is the customer's unfamiliarity with you, your company, and your product or service. A first-time buyer, one who has not bought the product or service before, or who has not bought it from you, is often nervous and requires a lot of hand-holding. Anything new or different makes the average customer tense and uneasy. This is why a new product or service, or a new business relationship with your company, has to be presented as a natural extension of what the customer is already doing.

Action Exercise

Identify the risks that a customer might find with your product or service. Once you had clearly defined those risks it will be easier to find solutions to them to ease nervous customers.

Top 5 Mistakes Made in Marketing

2010-01-27T21:22:00.003+08:00

Top 5 Mistakes Made in Marketing
By Laura Lake, About.com Guide
http://marketing.about.com

A properly developed marketing campaign can not only connect you with the right prospects, but it gets everyone talking about your company, your product, or your service. However, marketing mistakes can just as easily cost your business thousands of dollars. Here is a checklist of 5 mistakes commonly made in marketing.

1. Lack of Research and Testing

Research and testing should be done to determine the performance of every marketing effort. This takes the guesswork out of what your potential customer or client wants. Always make sure you have done your due diligence when it comes to testing different offers, prices, and packages. Get the input of your customers.

2. Improper Focus and Positioning

Don't market to build up the company, but approach marketing to demand an immediate response from the recipient. Improper focus and positioning can be avoided by following the proper solution positioning of marketing.

3. Marketing without a USP

Your USP is your unique selling proposition. It is the one single statement that will single you out amongst the competition. It should be used in every piece of marketing material. Think of your USP as the philosophical foundation of your business. Don't market without it!

4. Failing to Capture Repeat Customers

Keep in mind that when marketing 80% of your business comes from existing customers and 20% comes from new customers. Failing to resell to your current customer base could have a detrimental effect on your profits. It will cost you 5 times the expense to sell to a new customer than to sell to an existing customer.

5. Lack of Focus on Potential Customer's Needs

Do you really know what your potential customers need and want? If so you are ahead of the ballgame and probably don't need to be reading this article. Truth is very few businesses have a good grasp of what it is that their customer needs from them. The secret to avoiding this common error is to find a need you can fill and then fill that need better than anyone else.

The Seven P Formula for Marketing Success

2010-01-20T23:12:00.002+08:00

The Seven P Formula for Marketing Success
By Brian Tracy
http://www.briantracy.com

Once you have developed your marketing strategy, there is a seven P formula you should continually use to evaluate and reevaluate your business activities. These seven are: product, price, promotion, place, packaging, positioning, and people. As products, markets, customers, and needs change rapidly, you must continually revisit these seven P's to make sure you are on track and achieving the maximum results possible for you in today's Market.

Product

To begin, develop the habit of looking at your product as though you were an outside marketing consultant having been brought in to help your company decide whether or not it is in the right business at this time. Ask critical questions such as: Is your current product or service, or mix of products or services appropriate and suitable for the market and the customers of today?

Prices Deserve Attention

The second P in the formula has to do with price. Develop the habit of continually examining and reexamining the prices of the products and services that you sell to make sure they are still appropriate to the realities of the current market. Sometimes you need to lower your prices. At other times, it may be appropriate to raise your prices. Many companies have found that the profitability of certain products or services does not justify the amount of effort and resources that go into producing them. By raising their prices, they may lose a percentage of their customers, but the remaining percentage generates a profit on every sale. Could this be appropriate for you?

Promotion

The third habit in marketing and sales is for you to develop the habit of thinking in terms of promotion all the time. Promotion includes all the ways you tell your customers about products or services and how you then market and sell to them. Small changes in the way you promote and sell your products can lead to dramatic changes in your results. Experienced copywriters can often increase the response rate from advertising by 500 percent by simply changing the headline on the advertisement.

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Place

The fourth P in the marketing mix is the place where your product or service is actually sold. Develop the habit of reviewing and reflecting upon the exact location where the customer meets the salesperson. Sometimes a change in place can lead to a rapid increase in sales.

Packaging

The fifth element in the marketing mix is packaging. Develop the habit of standing back and looking at every visual element in the packaging of your product or service through the eyes of a critical prospect. Remember, people form their first impression about you within 30 seconds of seeing you or some element of your company. Small improvements in the packaging or external appearance of your product or service can often lead to completely different reactions from your customers.

Positioning

The next P is positioning. You should develop the habit of thinking continually about how you are positioned in the hearts and minds of your customers. How do people think about you and talk about you when you are not present? How do people think and talk about your company? What positioning do you have in your market, in terms of the specific words that people use when they describe you and your offerings to others?

People are Everything

The final P is people. Develop the habit of thinking in terms of the people inside and outside of your business who are responsible for every element of your sales and marketing strategy and activities. Your ability to select, recruit, hire, and retain the proper people, with the skills and abilities to do the job you need to have done, is more important than everything else put together.

Action Exercise

Position yourself in everything you say and do as the most credible and believable supplier of your product or service to your ideal customer.

Prospecting From Your Customer Base

2010-01-20T17:10:00.004+08:00

Prospecting From Your Customer Base
Written By : Carleadbest

It's easier to keep a customer you have than to get a new one. However, many salesperson get so caught up in the 'excitement of the chase' - the pursuit of new clients - that they forget about the client base they already have.You want to do more than just keep your current clients-you want to expend the amount of business you're doing with them.

It take work to keep any relationship going and growing.You can't depend on your product to keep your customers loyal.Currently, there's so much product parity that if you want to keep the competitive edge, you've got to provide the one thing your customers can't get from anyone else-personalized service.Your present customers can be the best source of future business. Here are some suggestions for prospecting from your customer base:

1.Make personal contact a priority.

Keep your best customers on speed dial so that you can call them when you have a free moment to say hello.This serves as a constant reminder of who your key contacts are and that you should keep in touch. With the press of one button, you can call to say hello, find out what's new with their business and see if there's any way you can be of further service.

2.Keep your customers in mind

If you see an article in a newspaper or magazine that might be of interest to them, send it to them. It could be some relevent industry news ( theirs or yours), or it could be something related to a sport or hobby that interests them.

3. Follow your MAP

Use your MAP ( Management Account Profile)board to keep track of customers' buying cycles. Then send out mailings to them every three, six or 12 months ( or whatever their cycle is ) announcing a new product or development, or to find out if there's any way you can be of service

4. Implement customer satisfaction surveys.

Many customers who have a minor complaints will never say anything about them , they just won't buy from you again. If you ask them for their opinion, however, they'll be glad to give you the chance to solve the problem. Call your customers and ask,"Is there anything we're not doing we should be doing?" Or, every few months, send current customers a one page survey about how you and your product or service are performing. The survey has two function: It give you a chance to correct any problems and it can be used as a selling tool for prospective clients. A positive survey from a satisfied customer reassures a prospect that he, too, can expect satisfaction.

5. Build a reputation as a problem solver

Problems are opportunities. Research conducted by the United States Office of Consumer affairs showed that of consumers who complaint and receive a satisfactory response, 70% out of them become the company's most loyal customers. If you should receive a compalint, go beyond the customer's expectations in solving the problem.

6. Learn about your customer's business and think of way to help their business grow.

Help your customers in any way you can, whether or not it has anything to do with sales. You might run into someone who could benefit from your customer's product or service. You might be in position to help get your customer some publicity or have some promotion ideas. Whatever you can do to help your customer's business will help yours as well.

7. Remember that customers buy from people they like, trust and respect.

- Like: A customer doesn't necessarily want to become your friend but she does want to feel comfortable with you.She has to feel a connection with you.She want to know that you are being yourself and that you can listen and respond to her needs.

- Trust: The basis for all sales relationships, especially those that entail ongoing and long-term sales cycles, is trust. TRUST is an acronym for the critical elements of a strong relationship:

Truth:Be totally honest
Reliability: Never promise something you can't deliver
Uncommon effort: Go the extra step to earn the business
Service: Superv service builds trust
Truth:Openness and honesty, start to finish.

-Respect:Customers will respect you when you are knowledgeable about your product or service and when you're prepared and professional on your calls. But they'll respect you even more when you take the time to learn their business and their needs and show your commitment to helping them achieve their goals.

Skip Perfection

2010-01-08T07:40:00.000+08:00

Skip Perfection and Go after the Easy Sales First

If you are still at the early stages of building your small or solo business and you’re struggling to get clients, what you need now are easy sales that generate cash flow. Cash flow will allow you to pay your bills and invest in growing your business.

You may think that you need to wait until your website is perfect, your marketing materials are perfect and your products and services are fully developed, but going for perfection will take time, is almost impossible to achieve and it will shut down your cash flow. The most successful entrepreneurs will tell you that it’s more important to put your products and services out there, take action and get a few clients into the pipeline. Even big companies (think Microsoft) don’t strive for perfection, but for “good enough”.

Your potential clients need their problems solved now. You’re the expert and you can help them even if your solution will get better over time.

There are many ways to go after easy sales. One approach is to host a get together for your local network of friends, colleagues and business connections. Make it your own personal social networking event. Do a brief presentation about the problems you solve and how you do it. Then ask people to take action. Either give them an incentive to sign up for your services right away or tell them they will be rewarded for sending referrals your way within one week after the event. Initially, offer the simplest, easiest solution you have. Don’t try to initially sell your most complex, high priced solution. Just get then buying and into your client funnel.

Another is to offer some very low priced entry level products, like e-books, reports or videos. Get people onto your mailing list and offer them a one time up sell into a more expensive option.

Invite people who follow you on social networks or who are in your local networking groups to a free tele-seminar. Give them good content then give them a limited time offer to purchase your product or service. Offer them a simple easy, no brainer purchase that will allow you to show that you deliver on your promises.

Finally, consider speaking to people who already serve your target market, but who don’t offer what you offer. Explain how they could endorse your product or service and you will give them a percentage of sales. They can increase their sales with little effort. This is a simple joint venture and they will need to trust in you and your product to agree, so let them sample it for free, or try it out on one or two of their clients if that’s a possibility.

Getting some clients in the door, even at a lower price than you will charge once you’ve ironed out the kinks, will give you experience and confidence. Then you need to get great testimonials from these clients and post them on all your web pages and marketing materials, at which point you can raise your prices a bit. Also ask these initial clients for referrals in return for a referral gift that they will find enticing.

Taking action is the key. You can have cash flowing into your business in 30 to 60 days. Don’t wait!

Create a Successful Business Plan in 30 days

2010-01-08T07:36:00.001+08:00

Create a Successful Business Plan in 30 days
Written by Janis Pettit

It’s time to make business goals. How much time have you scheduled in for planning this year? If you want a successful business, you have to plan!

The reason many small and solo business owners don’t plan is because they are caught up in an endless list of daily tasks that keep them running. By the end of the day you may find yourself too tired to do the creative thinking and brainstorming necessary for successful planning. So what you need to do is reserve thirty minutes or more first thing in the morning when you are refreshed and not stressed where you can think clearly and when great ideas can bubble to the surface. Do this for just 30 days.

Go ahead and schedule that time right now. Go ahead. Because if you don’t you’ll read this and then go back to doing things the way you have always done them. It’s human nature.

It wasn’t until I really grasped the crucial nature of planning for a successful business that my business growth exploded. Since then, in my work as a small business coach, I’ve walked hundreds of small and solo business owners through this process and it really can be fun and exciting. So how do you get started?

You need to create a Business Design that is based around your long term goals, your lifestyle and around creating both active and passive income streams so you’re not stuck just selling time for dollars. You got into business to live a certain lifestyle and you need to consider that when planning. A Business Design will take you through several important steps that will end up being a repeatable system that you can implement over and over in your business.

1) First you need to determine where there is an obvious need in the marketplace, within the scope of your talents, skills, passion and knowledge that you can fill. Where are there people searching for the solution to a problem you can solve, who are willing and able to pay for that solution? Don’t make the frustrating mistake of creating a product or offering a service because you think people want it. Go find out what they want first by doing some basic online research.

2) Once you’ve identified an obvious need or growing trend within your area of expertise, you’ll need to develop a series of sequential or related products and services that can address that need and that group of people over time. I call this the Product Funnel. If you get a client, you don’t want to lose them after a single sale, do you? So you need to plan out a natural sequence of products that you could sell over time to that customer.

3) Next you’ll need to figure out how you will lead people from one product to the next. One way might be to offer levels, like beginner, intermediate and advanced. You could have a basic version of a product and a fully loaded version. You could create a product or service that addresses sub niches within a bigger niche. For example, people that need to learn about marketing their business need knowledge in many areas: how to create a great website, traffic generation, how to use e-mail marketing, how to use social media, and how to write good sales copy. So how can you logically move buyers from one purchase to the next in a way that will increase the value you give them and the loyalty they have for you and your business.

4) Figure out the “plumbing”. What marketing materials will you need? What new web pages will you need? Will you need to add new autoresponder lists and write new e-mails for new leads? Do you need any programming done? What about photos, graphics or videos? Make a list of what you’ll need to support each product in your funnel.

5) Decide on a Marketing Design. Pick 3 primary marketing activities you will relentlessly focus on implementing to drive leads to your business and generate online traffic. Obviously working on your webpages and following an online lead generation system is crucial. You may also include search engine optimization or pay per click ads with Google or Yahoo. Don’t forget to focus on active marketing offline as well. Pick marketing that allows you to connect directly with your leads, through speaking, networking or phone sales.

6) Finally, map out a schedule for next year, or at least for the first 6 months:

•Decide exactly which marketing activities you’ll do each week and month.
•Decide when you’ll launch new products and when you will need to start marketing your new product.
•Schedule tele-classes, webinars, speaking engagements—whatever you can plan in advance.
•Schedule in your vacation times so you know when not to plan business activities.
•Add any regular activities to your schedule.
In one month, with just 30 minutes a day, you can complete this task. I cannot tell you the feeling of elation when you see your business plan there, on your calendar, in black and white. The energy, focus and clear goals that it creates are so motivating. And the successful business that will be the result is the real reward.

So the next time you’re tempted to skip the planning, think of what you really deserve to achieve and how you’ll get there so much faster by planning.

Marketing Your Business: What Works Now

2010-01-08T07:32:00.001+08:00

Marketing Your Business: What Works Now
Written by Janis Pettit

Why would you waste one dollar or one hour on marketing that doesn’t work? It happens all the time and the reason is often just a lack of knowledge or understanding about what would work better. As small or solo business owners, who can afford to waste time or money on marketing your business that doesn’t work?

If you are doing what I call “shot in the dark” marketing, which means a little of this and a little of that, hoping something will hit the target, I want you to stop now. Before you spend another penny come up with a strategy and a plan—what I call a Marketing Design.

The goal of your marketing should be to attract qualified leads, so you can then create a trusting relationship and convert them to clients. Most marketing does not lead directly to a sale but to an inquiry. So forget about generic marketing whose only goal is to get your name out there. If you’re small you can’t afford that luxury. Your marketing needs to be all about generating qualified leads and opt-in subscribers.

So what works now? Some of the strategies that used to work are now less effective and others are taking over. So let’s look at a few.

E-mail marketing: it’s still crucial for you to have an opt-in form on your key web pages where people can sign up for your mailing list and receive a free gift in return. However, less people are choosing to opt-in than ever before because they just don’t want more email. That said, once people are on your subscriber list they are very valuable leads and as long as your emails are a mix of real value and gentle promotions you’ll see huge gains.

Twitter and Facebook: I’ve found that people either gravitate toward regularly using one or the other. Since you can connect your Twitter feed to appear on your Facebook wall you can “kill two birds with one stone” and save time. The key to succeeding with both is to find followers or friends who are in your target market by using the search tool. Build relationships with these people by responding personally and offering great advice. Then send them to your web page or blog when you have a special, limited time offer, tele-class, webinar or other time sensitive special event. Once there ask them to opt-in for more information, which they will gladly do if you are really offering value. The key here is value—not hype. Also build your followers by replying to and re-tweeting leaders in your niche who have a huge number of followers. Finally join groups on Facebook that contain your target clients.

Linked In: Perfect if your target clients are businesses. Be more subdued here in presenting special offers and give value by answering questions people ask in your field.

Industry specific and local social networking sites: There are now social networking sites for people who have specific interests. Consider Yahoo groups or groups on Meetup.com. If a group contains members of your target market, join it and contribute value to the group.

Video: it’s big and getting bigger. But don’t just expect to throw a video up on You Tube and get viewers. Make it relevant, creative, touching or shocking and you’ll generate interest. Also use TubeMogul to upload it to multiple video sites.

Blog comments: find the leading blogs in your niche and start adding valuable comments with a link back to your site in the signature. Form a relationship with the blog owner and they just may be interested in promoting your website or product.

Direct Mail: It’s making a resurgence as people tire of email. Try using Send Out Cards to create warm compelling messages with a variety of graphics. Creating a sequence of compelling direct mail pieces and mailing them to a warm list can be a great follow up to your email marketing.

Phone sales: Once we added phone calls back into our marketing mix sales dramatically increased. We call people who are already on our email list to see how we can help them. Also consider calling people who have customer service issues to see what they currently need. You don’t have to cold call. Call people on your subscriber list or who you connect with through social media or through networking. Or warm them up by sending a card or letter first. Each of these approaches will result in additional sales.

Look at the marketing you’re doing now and eliminate or tweak what isn’t working now. Put together a well thought out strategy to use a mix of the ideas above to create a powerful marketing program.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010

2010-01-01T00:09:00.001+08:00

Be Inspired

2009-12-31T18:11:00.000+08:00

Happy Holidays

2009-12-24T14:47:00.001+08:00

Practice Make Perfect

2009-12-21T20:12:00.002+08:00

Six Ways Retailers Will Trick You to Spend More This Holiday

2009-12-18T12:09:00.001+08:00

Six Ways Retailers Will Trick You to Spend More This Holiday

Chances are your wife doesn't need a matching pair of slippers to go with the pajama set you bought her this holiday.

But if you spend $5 more, you get free shipping on your order. So it would be silly not to buy them -- right?

As the crucial holiday shopping season progresses, retailers are desperate to make sure the few dollars consumers part with this month are spent at their stores.

By offering gimmicks such as free shipping, they're also hoping shoppers will splurge on that extra little something that wasn't on their list.

And the deals are more aggressive than ever.

"Everybody is in the discount business these days," said George Whalin, president and CEO of Retail Management Consultants. "If they [aren't], they won't get the customer through the door."

Because self-spending levels dropped off at the height of the crisis, a new strategy retailers have employed is distributing gift cards to customers who spend a certain dollar amount in their stores, analysts said.

Some consumers are more apt to spend a few extra bucks to earn these free credits because they seem like a bigger bargain than receiving a percentage off, said Brian Sozzi, equity research analyst at Wall Street Strategies independent research company. But often, the deals aren't as great as they appear.

At Abercrombie and Fitch, for example, shoppers who spend $100 receive a $25 gift card. The hitch, however, is that the cards can't be used until January. When shoppers return to the teen retailer then, the steep discounts are gone, and there isn't much in the store that fits into the $25 or less category, Sozzi said.

"You're spending maybe $150 on an entire outfit and you're only getting $25 off," Sozzi said.

That means two trips of increased sales for the retailer.

Free shipping offers similarly stimulate online sales, especially when customers have to spend a certain dollar amount to receive it. According to a study by the National Retail Federation, nearly 80 percent of online retailers plan to offer free shipping with conditions at some point this season.

At Bed, Bath and Beyond, for example, shoppers receive free standard shipping when they spend $100 or more over the Web. Even though shipping typically doesn't cost very much, this method persuades shoppers to buy that item they were up in the air about, Sozzi said.

Wal-Mart Stores offers a variation on this method, allotting customers free shipping to a nearby store. The discounter markets the service as a convenience, but it's another way to get shoppers into their locations, where they might add items to their carts, Sozzi said.

"In-store pickup programs can be an important differentiator against lagging multichannel competitors and a key tactic against online-only rivals," according to a Forrester research note.

Perhaps the biggest consumer peg this holiday is packaged deals, such as buy one get one free sweaters at Ann Taylor, Sozzi said.

Limited Brands has long marketed its products this way, offering "Buy 2, Get 1 Free" scents at Bath and Body Works stores and "5 for $25" cotton panties from Victoria's Secret.

And as always, retailers have designed their stores so that shoppers first have to walk through more expensive sections, such as apparel, to get to the highly reduced inventory, Sozzi said.

"They make it easy to pick up scarves and belts and other various accessory-type items," he said.

Retailers have also become more aggressive in offering discounts for those who spend a certain amount of money in one visit, such as at Express, where consumers get $15 off if they spend $30. But Whalin said he's worried that some stores may be taking the discounts too far.

"That's an awful lot [off]," he said.

Still, an NRF study found that impulse spending will fall again this year. What's more, experts agree it will be hard to break consumers of the crisis-bred expectation that they should never have to pay full price for an item.

But 2009's marketing approach is still an improvement over last year -- when retailers slashed up to 70 percent off on apparel -- because they had time to strategize deals and cut back on inventories, said Ellen Davis, vice president of the National Retail Federation. Plus, it's a way to move products out the door.

As the economy improves, Davis said she predicts retailers will begin to market different perks, such as the best customer service. But for now, price remains key.

"We all want a bargain, I don't care who we are," Whalin said. "Frugality is definitely the way of life today."

7 Holiday Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

2009-12-18T12:01:00.004+08:00

7 Holiday Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
By Starr Hall

The holidays have arrived, and you still don't have a plan for marketing to your current customers or reaching out to new markets. Why do the holidays seem to sneak up on us every single year? As much as we try to prepare ourselves for family, shopping, gift giving and travel, it's no wonder we often forget about our businesses marketing during all the holiday mayhem.

It's quite common for business owners to freeze their marketing efforts over the holiday season with the notion that they're going to start strong in the new year; little do they know, however, just how many opportunities have passed them by.

The holidays can be the best time to bring in new business and reconnect with current clients and customers. The holiday rush is not just for brick-and-mortar department stores; it can also help your business by boosting revenue and customer loyalty before the end of the year.

Here are the top seven marketing mistakes businesses make during the holidays:

1.No marketing plan going into the holiday season. Your holiday marketing should have been planned in the summertime, but now it's the holiday season, so what do you do? Take some time today to decide what you are going to do and offer for the rest of the holiday season. If it's just too late, then start with a New Year focus. For 2010, set a marketing calendar at the beginning of the year that can serve as a blueprint for your marketing plans year round.

2.No communications. Many business owners mistakenly think that offices are closed or people are too busy to be bothered. If you choose not to follow up with leads or customers because it's a busy time of year, you're making excuses. Although the holiday season is hectic for most, for some businesses it's actually the slowest and the best time to pick up the phone and make a call for their business. If it's not the holidays, it'll be the New Year, or Spring break, then summer. Now is the best time to market precisely because so many people don't.

3.No holiday offers. People, for the most part, love the holiday season; they like to focus on gift giving, vacations and family time. So if you don't provide a holiday special or offer that helps them with those goals, you are doing them--and your business--a grave disservice. Any product or service can be repackaged with a holiday offer or theme. Search online to see what other companies are offering; it might spark an idea or two for your business.

4.Not sending holiday greetings to customers. These are people that have been loyal, bought from you and supported your business year round; you need to let them know that you are not only thinking about them over the holidays but that you are grateful for their business. Take a few hours out of your day and hand write a holiday greeting card. There are automated systems such asSendOutCards.comwhere you can design your own card (to add a personal touch) and you can even send a gift with the card. In addition, this service will put the postage on the card and send it for you, saving you a trip to the post office.

5.Forgetting to ask how clients are doing. This is something that most businesses completely miss the boat on; they do not survey clients and customers from the current year to see how they can improve in the future. How are you going to know what worked and didn't if you don't ask? If you keep doing what you have always done, you'll keep getting what you've always gotten. Find out what worked and what didn't, look at your systems and your marketing, and then make improvements and enhance your current offerings.Constantcontact.comhas great online survey templates. Offer a free gift or holiday discount to customers who take the time to complete your survey.

6.Shirking your public relations. Many businesses don't reach out to the media during the holidays because the owners are under the impression that media outlets shut their doors or are too busy to bother with new story ideas. This couldn't be farther from the truth. The media is always open and looking for the next great story or feature. If you can tie your story in with the season, all the better. If you missed the holiday calendar, you can still plant a seed for a feature in the new year. A great way to connect with the media during this time of year is to contact the media using LinkedIn, which will usually go right to their inbox.

7.Not tapping into year-end budgets. There are thousands of companies that earmark holiday and year-end budgets--that money must be spent. These budgets are usually set prior to the holidays and focus on staff or client gifts and employee training as well as planning for the new year. What service or product can you offer to help them meet their budget and year-end goals? If you do a keyword search that applies to your industry or topic on social sites such as Twitter, you can see what people are looking for and talking about. This can help you plan and approach contacts with holiday offers.

Big Risk in a One-Man Brand Like Tiger Woods

2009-12-14T22:59:00.007+08:00

Big Risk in a One-Man Brand Like Tiger Woods
By TIM ARANGO
Published: December 13, 2009

Accenture, the giant consulting firm, ended its six-year marketing relationship with Tiger Woods on Sunday, showing once again that in advertising as in sports, there are no sure things.

Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press
In February 2009, Tiger Woods played in a golf tournament sponsored by Accenture, a giant consulting company that chose the golfer as the face of its brand.
-------------------------------

Mr. Woods had been featured in Accenture campaigns with the tagline, “Go On. Be a Tiger,” splashed in business magazines and airport waiting rooms since 2003. Since most consumers have no idea what a company like Accenture does, Mr. Woods became the human face of the corporation and a means to extol the corporate virtues of performance and risk-taking.

In a statement Sunday, the company said Mr. Woods, 34, was “no longer the best representative” for its advertising. The action came more than two weeks after a bizarre car accident involving Mr. Woods, who is married, led to a series of embarrassing revelations about affairs he has carried on with other women. Then on Friday he announced that he was taking a hiatus from golf.

Accenture is the first of Mr. Woods’s many sponsors to withdraw its support completely. Gillette has said that it would remove its Woods-related advertising for now and other sponsors, like AT&T, PepsiCo and Nike, have said they will wait to see when and how Mr. Woods returns to golf before making any permanent decisions. EA Sports, which has a line of best-selling Tiger Woods video games, is also standing by the golf star.
In response to Accen
ture’s announcement, Mark Steinberg, Mr. Woods’s agent, said, “We are disappointed but respect their decision.”

Accenture’s decision is another example of how risky it can be for corporations to base their marketing efforts on individual celebrities in an age when blogs, camera phones and the digital footprint left by the celebrities themselves can quickly expose their foibles to the world.

Earlier this year, Kellogg dropped its sponsorship of Michael Phelps, the gold-medal swimmer, after he was photographed using a bong at a party, saying, in language similar to Accenture’s, that his acts were not “consistent with the image of Kellogg.” In 2003, Nutella and McDonald’s ended their deals with Kobe Bryant after he was accused of sexual assault in Colorado; the charges were eventually dropped.
Among corporate pitchmen, however, Mr. Woods is unique. He dominates a sport for individuals that is marketed around the world while still being hugely popular in the United States, in contrast to sports like tennis.

More than any other athlete, Mr. Woods has built a billion-dollar brand around himself that has not only benefited him but has also made millions of dollars for his sponsors. Perhaps the best analogy for Mr. Woods’s predicament is not another athlete but Martha Stewart — another example of a billion-dollar brand based on the cultivated image of one person.

Ms. Stewart put her public company and television contracts at risk when she was convicted of lying to prosecutors about a minor stock deal. She emerged from her five-month sentence in prison to retake the reins at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, but the company has not returned to the financial heights it once enjoyed.
“Tiger is the best example of a walking, individual corporation,” said Ben Porritt, a public relations executive who advised Alex Rodriguez, the Yankees third baseman, last spring after his onetime steroid use was disclosed.

“Tiger is going to come out of this as somewhat of a bankrupt brand,” said Mr. Porritt. “He will have to restructure and go forward.” But, he said, “It’s going to be an ugly few months.”

Several companies that measure consumer reaction believe the ugliness has already started. Zeta Interactive, a digital ad agency that monitors message boards, blogs and social media posts, said that positive sentiment toward Mr. Woods had already plummeted. Before the accident, buzz about the golfer was 91 percent positive; by Friday, that figure had sunk to 43 percent.

The turnabout “is the quickest fall from positive to negative we’ve ever seen,” said Al DiGuido, chief executive at Zeta Interactive.

The Nielsen IAG unit of the Nielsen Company found that the accident quickly affected the brands Mr. Woods peddles. There were more than 20 instances through Monday, Dec. 7, of jokes being made on late-night talk shows that paired Mr. Woods with one of his sponsors by name, according to Nielsen IAG.

The recall among viewers of the brand mentioned in the joke was 55 percent, according to Nielsen IAG, compared with a norm in late-night shows of 39 percent.
About 11 percent of those viewers who recalled a brand with ties to Mr. Woods said they had a negative opinion of the brand, Nielsen IAG reported, compared with the average negative opinion of a brand mentioned in a late-night show of 6 percent.
David Arluck, an independent sports marketing executive, said that Accenture was in a different spot than other sponsors because it pitched a service to businesses, not consumers, and so it had centered its branding on Mr. Woods’s persona.

“In business, credibility means a lot and honesty means a lot, and Accenture wants to be a company that can be trusted,” he said. “Obviously Tiger Woods did some things that betrayed the trust of people who were close to him, and I can see how they would want to distance themselves from that.”

Even the most upright athletes seem to be aware of the tenuousness of image in the Internet age. On a recent evening in Manhattan, the Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter — a close friend of Mr. Woods — stood on a dais after receiving Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year award and was asked, essentially, how he was able to enjoy the perks of athletic superstardom for so many years and maintain his pitch-perfect image.

“Don’t jinx me,” Mr. Jeter said, to nervous laughter.

Ian Austen, Larry Dorman, Stuart Elliott and Stephanie Clifford contributed reporting.

Six Things You Should Know About Collecting Receivables

2009-12-14T22:53:00.003+08:00

Six Things You Should Know About Collecting Receivables
By JAY GOLTZ

In my last post, I explained how my lawyer, Ira Helfgot, who is president of the Illinois Creditors Bar Association, helped me collect a serious and seriously late receivable. Mr. Helfgot also gave me a quick six-point primer on the world of credit collection that I will share with you:

1. Many businesspeople think that if they get a lawyer to send a letter, the customer will pay. This is usually not the case. By the time it gets that far, your customer is probably not paying a lot of people and those people are all getting lawyers to send letters.

2. Collection agencies work on a percentage basis and generally do not file lawsuits to collect. Instead, they write letters and make telephone calls. But if a letter from a lawyer won’t work, neither are letters or telephone calls from a collection agency likely to work.

3. From a business standpoint, most lawyers don’t take collection matters because the business owner does not want to pay the lawyer on an hourly basis (otherwise known as throwing good money after bad), and most collection matters are too small to yield a reasonable fee for the lawyer on a percentage basis. (The standard contingency fee for lawyers is one-third, but there are lots of variables and the rate is open to negotiation.)

4. Most collection lawyers are willing to take small matters on a percentage basis but would rather not take a single file; most of their clients have hundreds of files. Various state or national bar associations, like the Illinois Creditors Bar Association, the National Association of Retail Collection Attorneys and the Commercial Law League of America may be helpful in finding a collection attorney.

5. In Illinois, a corporation can file a claim without an attorney if the claim is $2,500 or less. But filing a claim does not automatically result in obtaining a judgment, and obtaining a judgment does not automatically result in getting paid. This is a time-consuming and difficult process. Lawyers get paid for their time and expertise — just as you do.

6. Companies frequently wait too long to turn a bill over to a lawyer or compound their error by extending even more credit in a risky effort to double down. You need to know when to say when so that there is money left to get.

If you have any questions for Mr. Helfgot, you can e-mail him at iralaw@sbcglobal.net.

Jay Goltz owns five small businesses in Chicago.

The Secrets to Collecting Receivables

2009-12-14T22:48:00.003+08:00

The Secrets to Collecting Receivables
By JAY GOLTZ

One of the more harrowing parts of running a business is learning the realities of selling on credit. I sell art and framing to businesses and institutions, and I am forced to extend credit to many of them. I say forced because no one in his right mind would give credit if he didn’t have to.

This kind of credit, known as trade credit, is unsecured credit, which means you are at the end of the line to get paid if your customer goes broke. That’s what makes this a particularly dangerous game to play. Most entrepreneurs have little or no experience overseeing an intelligent credit policy when they start their businesses. They learn quickly. In the beginning, it’s all about making sales. After a while you learn that it’s about making sales and getting paid.

Last year I made a large art sale to a local college. One of the pieces it ordered was a commissioned sculpture that cost $70,000. For reasons that were never clear to me, everything the college ordered was billed through a “marketing company” that contracted for the work and paid the bills. I had done business with the company before, and it had good credit. As is customary, I got a 50-percent deposit on the order. So far so good.

We finished the project and billed the company for the balance. We did not get paid at 30 days, and our collection efforts started. First, my receivables person started calling and got the usual stories. At 60 days, my chief financial officer took over and got a different standard response: “We have over $600,000 in receivables ourselves and people are paying us slowly. Don’t worry, you’ll get paid.”

At 90 days, as per our protocol, I took over. There is something special about getting a call from the chief executive to get a bill paid. I called the partner who had signed the credit application and who is also the marketing company’s chief financial officer. I got the same $600,000 story. I told him I would call back in two weeks if I didn’t get paid.

Many times I do get paid; this time I didn’t. I called back and got the $600,000 story again. “Wait a second,” I said, “I own a business. I get the slow receivable thing. But how could your receivables not have gone down in the two months since we have been calling? Someone must be paying. What’s the real story?”

I learned this interrogation technique from watching too many episodes of “NYPD Blue” and “Law and Order.” This is not a game for the timid. I got a confession. The chief financial officer told me that the company had changed its “business model” from printing to digital and that the new computer programs they had developed took longer to get to market than they had expected.

When you extend credit, you essentially go into business with your customers. Twenty years ago I would have gone along with the program of financing their new business model — only to find myself cut out of the will when the company died. But I had seen this movie before, and I had learned my lesson.

I told him he had two weeks to come up with the money, or I was giving the case to a lawyer. I did not get paid, so I gave it to a lawyer who specializes in business credit collection. The lawyer, Ira Helfgot, is president of the Illinois Creditors Bar Association. The end of the story is that Mr. Helfgot got a judgment against the company and a garnishment on its bank account. I got paid.

Part miracle, part good legal work, part knowing when to send in the dogs. Every situation is different, but from my experience, when an account goes beyond 120 days you’d better face the reality that statistically you are very likely holding a bad hand. I have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in bad receivables. It is sometimes the cost of doing business. Other times, it is the cost of not doing business properly. I have done both.

Here’s what I’ve learned: Always get a signed credit application. Always check credit. Always establish credit limits. Always call when they are late. Always assume that you are going to have some losses.

Jay Goltz owns five small businesses in Chicago.

Eight keys to successful prospecting

2009-12-14T22:03:00.008+08:00

Eight keys to successful prospecting
By Carleadbest

Johnny Appleseed had the right idea. Everywhere he went, he scattered apple seeds all around him. He knew that some seeds would take root and grow, bur many would not. Yet that didn't discourage him. In fact, it gave him incentive to sow more apple seeds, knowing that more would take root and eventually the whole country would enjoy the fruits of his labor.

Prospecting is based on the Johnny Appleseed principle. If you are prospecting all the time, you chances of reaping rewards are greater. There are eight keys to successful prospecting:

1. Always be prospecting

Plant so many seeds that you don't have to worry about each individual sale. You have much more confident when you know that if one sale falls through, another will sprout in its place. Constant prospecting gives you the experience needed to gain confident.

2. Qualify your prospecting activity.

Target key customers who have the greatest ability to buy your product or service.

3. Build relationship.

Treat prospects as if they are already your best customers.

4. Understand that rejection comes with the territory

Nobody likes rejection, but there is one basic truth in selling: If you are not getting a lot of rejections, you are not working hard enough.

5. Learn from your mistakes.

You're bound to make some along the way- ask yourself what you can do differently next time.

6. Believe 100% in your product or service.

If you believe that your product or service can help people solve their problems and make their lives a little easier, then you'll want to be out there selling all the time.

7. Keep an organized list of who to call.

Use research, networking and referrels to increase your chances of success.

8. Don't be afraid to move on.

Make sure you're not wasting your time with people who are stalling or leading you on. If you have enough other activity, you don't need 'going -nowhere" accounts.

Successful selling is not nine to five job. Top sales people are prospecting all the time. The more you put in your sales career, the more you get out of it.

The Secret of a Sales Manager

2009-12-11T20:22:00.001+08:00

The Secret of a Sales Manager

A friend of mine is a very successful sales manager. After he had carefully interviewed and then selected a new salesman, he would take the salesman to a Cadillac dealership and insist that he trade in his old car for a new Cadillac. The salesman would usually balk at the idea. He would be frightened of the cost of the car and huge monthly payments involved. But the sales manager would insist that he buy the Cadillac as a condition of employment. At first, the salesman would feel guilt for buying the car, but within a few days, he would begin to see himself as the kind of person who drove a new Cadillac. He would see himself as a big money earner in his field, one of the top performers in his industry. And time after time, almost without fail, the salespeople in this organization became sales superstars.

Create the Mental Equivalent

Emmet Fox, the spiritual teacher, once said, "Your main job in life is to create the mental equivalent within yourself of what you want to realize and enjoy in your outer world." Your focus must be on creating the beliefs within yourself that are consistent with the great success you want to be in your outer world. You achieve this by challenging your self-limiting beliefs, rejecting them, and then acting as if they did not exist.

Behave Consistent with Your New Self-Image

You develop new beliefs by taking actions consistent with those beliefs. You act as if you already believe that you have these capabilities and competences. You behave like a positive, optimistic, and cheerful person toward everyone. You act as if your success is already guaranteed. You act as if you have a secret guarantee of success and only you know about it. You realize that you are developing, shaping, and controlling the evolution of your own character and personality by everything that you do and say every single day.

Make a Decision

Make a decision this very day to challenge and reject any self-limiting beliefs that you might have that could be holding you back. Look into yourself and question the areas of your life where you have doubts about your abilities or talents. You might ask your friends and family members if they see any negative beliefs that you might have. Often, they will be aware of self-limiting beliefs you have that you are not aware of yourself. In every case, once you have identified these negative beliefs, ask yourself, "What if the opposite were true?"

Keep Your Words and Actions Consistent

Your beliefs are always manifested in your words and actions. Make sure that everything you say and do from now on is consistent with the beliefs that you want to have and the person that you want to become. In time, you will replace more and more of your self-limiting beliefs with self-enhancing beliefs.

Action Exercise

Imagine that you have the "golden touch" with money. If you were an extremely competent money manager, how would you handle your finances?

The marketing system that guarantees success, Pt. 1

2009-12-11T20:13:00.002+08:00

The marketing system that guarantees success, Pt. 1

By Annette Bau
Managing Member and Founder, MillionDollarMarketingPractices.com
Featured Expert: Sales and Marketing Strategies

My entire life has been dedicated to studying and interviewing successful people. I have interviewed hundreds of multi-millionaires to get inside their head and learn what they do differently to achieve amazing levels of success. Not surprising are the differences that separate an average producer and a top producer, or a millionaire and a non-millionaire. While subtle, these differences are clearly critical to reaching the ranks of the upper echelon in business and life.

From my 20+ years of researching successful people, I define success as a person who achieves a balanced life consisting of wealth, health, happiness and peace of mind. While most people who want to remain seated would not sit on a four-legged chair that was missing a leg, you shouldn't focus on wealth at the cost of failed relationships or health. In studying people who have long-term success in their business and balanced lives, the importance of a solid foundation quickly becomes clear -- which includes a plan and a clear vision.

Step 1: Decide

The first step is to decide what you want. When are you at your best? What motivates and inspires you? Take time to clearly see your future. Once you are clear on your ideal future, then create both a visualization board and a visualization book. This is a collage of pictures that motivate and inspire you. Each morning when you rise and each evening when you retire, review your book. Put your board where you can see it during the day.

Step 2: Write out your mission

The next step is to write out your mission statement. It should be clear, easy to understand and you want to memorize it. For example, MillionDollarMarketingPractices.com's mission statement is: "We are a consulting and coaching firm that provides solutions and strategies to help advisors grow their business and increase their income while creating a wonderful life."

Sun Microsystems mission is "To solve complex networking computing problems for government enterprises and service providers."

The key is to clearly and concisely identify your desired outcome.

Step 3: Write affirmative goals

The next step is to write out goals in every area of your life, including your career, finances, family, relationships, health, spirituality and community. The most effective goals are positive, present-tense.

Examples:
o I earn $500,000 per year working with 100 non-traditional affluent women.
o I weigh 125 pounds, work out for 30 minutes four times per week and eat lean protein, fresh vegetables and complex carbohydrates.

Step 4: Create HVFDAs for each goal

A successful life is a balance between your affirmative goals and actions. I recommend that you identify two actions, which I refer to as high-value fixed daily activities (HVFDAs), for each goal. These are actions you must do consistently on a daily basis to achieve your goals.

For example, sample HVFDAs for the first affirmative goal above could include:

o I complete one community feeder workshop each week.
o I prospect and make calls each day from 10-2.

Putting it all together

It's important that your goals, affirmations, HVFDAs, and objectives resonate with you and motivate you. If you have a tendency to procrastinate, or find it hard to remember or find time to set goals, I encourage you to create a daily checklist.

Once you have created a foundation, determined what you want, written out your goals and HFVDAs you are ready to choose a niche market.

Top producers who also have a balanced life understand the power of identifying and serving a niche market. Creating a target market is critical to becoming a rainmaker, because it allows you to streamline your business, become a specialist, and increase your value to prospects and clients.

I recommend no more than two niche markets, but you need to determine what works for you. No matter how many you go for, I think it's a good idea to become successful in one niche market before expanding into another.

So how do you pick a niche market?

The first step in determining the best niche market for you is to determine with whom you are compatible. When you work with clients whose values and personality profiles complement your own, work becomes fun, clients feel more like friends, and success comes with greater ease.

The four main personality profiles I use to classify people are:

Doers get to the bottom line and make decisions quickly.

With doers, it's essential to stick to the basics and keep it simple. Because time and results are so important, they need to get to the bottom line as quickly as possible. Ask them about their morning ritual and they'll sum it up in one or two sentences. Examples include most businessowners, executives, and non-traditional affluent women. Expressives and other doers tend to work well with clients who are doers. Amiables can work well with doers, if they learn to not take the doers responses personally.

Expressives are talkative and outgoing extroverts.

They know everyone and everything that's going on. They need you to listen and ask them questions, but don't leave the questions too open-ended or they'll just keep on talking. Examples of expressives include salespeople of all types. Amiables can work well with clients who are expressives.

An amiable's goal is to be your friend.

They value relationships, harmony, and connecting, and will avoid confrontation at any cost. Amiables will tell you something you what to hear in order to avoid a confrontation. Examples include traditional women and caregivers such as nurses, social workers, and teachers. Doers tend to work well with amiables, who are often married to doers. Just be sure they get to talk on their own, without pressure from a domineering spouse. I would say something like, "It's important to me as an advisor to take turns with each of you answering the questions, so I really understand how you both feel."

Analytics are technicians who enjoy all the details.

They're perfectionists and value being right -- which they often are. To work with this personality type, you need to provide plenty of data and release your need to be right. Analytics may have trouble making decisions or coming to conclusions. They can also be viewed as difficult or boring, unless you're as analytical as they are. Examples include scientists, engineers, CPAs, architects, and researchers. Analytics tend to work well with analytics.

Obviously, these personalities exist along a continuum, and often you'll have to make allowances for specific clients. But knowing basic personality types -- and knowing how they mesh with your own personality profile -- can help you find work that's as enjoyable as it is profitable.

Now you want to list your clients (from most favorite to least favorite) and then determine their personality profile.

So let's say, for example, that you decide you're best suited to work with doers. The next step is to take the time to research groups and associations where doers congregate. Once you have a list put together, call and find out if these associations allow affiliate memberships for people who are not CEOs, entrepreneurs, etc.

Once you have determined the niche market you want to work with, the next step is to learn how to serve them successfully... guaranteed!

Thinking Outside The (Big) Box

2009-12-10T14:21:00.003+08:00

Creative Disruption

Thinking Outside The (Big) Box
Julie Toscano Sequeira,
Experimentation can turbocharge innovation in the consumer packaged-goods industry.

Experimentation is an important element of emergent strategy that offers innovators the opportunity to test key assumptions early and get the information needed to move forward more efficiently and effectively.

In the world of consumer products, key assumptions that need to be tested often fall in the domain of the consumer. Will this concept resonate with target consumers? Can we convince them to shift well-established behavior patterns? What can we expect for trial and repeat? What price is appropriate?

The big box is key to volume and therefore is the ultimate goal for most new CPG products; the big box is often not the most conducive venue for testing such assumptions. From a channel perspective, shelf space is scarce and expensive, marketing costs are high, lead times are long, the environment is demanding, and product assortments are rarely dictated at the individual store level. From an internal perspective, getting the attention of the existing sales force amidst a more proven assortment can be difficult. And, from a competitive standpoint, an experimental offering in the traditional channel could tip a hat earlier than might be desired.

So experimentation in CPG often requires thinking "outside the (big) box" in order to be most successful. The results of tests run in alternative channels can offer evidence to support (or refute) a traditional launch and can help refine the concept in advance of such a launch. Further, in many cases, these channels can represent not only a venue for experimentation but also an early or alternate form of distribution.

The bottom line? Don't focus on volume when running experiments. Rather, focus intently on speed, affordability, connecting directly with consumers and concept refinement. Here are six different possibilities for structuring early experiments in CPG.

(Give It a Spot in the Company Store

Yes, this is a great way for employees to fill their pantry and demonstrate their product loyalty at a fraction of the retail cost. But the company store can offer a lot more for innovators aiming to get an early read on a product. Almost all CPG companies are diversified across categories and brands, and much (if not most) of the employee base can offer a fairly objective response to new products sprinkled onto shelves.

Offering a new product internally can enable a good-enough approach across several dimensions (i.e., packaging, messaging). True, the shelf is less crowded and the competition is less intense. But you're almost guaranteed a spot at the shelf, the price tag is cheap and the testing can happen very quickly. To get an early read on consumer appetite for a new idea, the company store offers a lot of advantages.

Leverage Cyberspace with a Virtual Launch

Want to bypass the retail channel altogether when testing a concept? The Internet enables manufacturers to conduct small-scale launches that do just that by setting up simple Web sites with order-taking and fulfillment capabilities.

To be sure, this is not the correct experiment to test uptake at the shelf or competitive positioning. Virtual launches, however, offer a lot of other advantages when testing assumptions around new concepts.

First, such launches enable rapid testing of consumer response to formulation, packaging and branding without the crippling cost of a full-scale launch. Second, such launches can create buzz as they can attract early adopters, bloggers, Twitter and Facebook users, and even the increasing numbers of mainstream press who are listening to these channels. Finally, manufacturers are able to gather valuable consumer information not possible through traditional channels, including feedback (i.e., comment boxes, chat boards), purchase behaviors (i.e., trial vs. repeat), and customer characteristics (i.e., location, demographics).

P&G ( PG - news - people ) has been very active in its experimentation with virtual launches with products including Crest Whitestrips, Pampers Change 'N Go, Swash by Tide and Align GI. And results from such launches have had a definite impact on innovation approach, whether that be doubling down or folding on an investment.
In the case of Crest Whitestrips, a virtual launch on whitestrips.com and in select dental offices generated unexpectedly high sales ($23 million from August 2000 to May 2001) and led to an acceleration of the retail launch timeline. In contrast, the information gathered from other virtual launches has ultimately led to the decision not to move forward--again, these exits are in many ways successes as the market experiments are conducted at a fraction of a cost compared to a true launch.

Reach for the TV Waves with Direct Response

Television can offer a unique placement opportunity for manufacturers seeking input on product, pricing, trial/repeat, marketing, messaging and a host of other product dimensions. These channels are typically most applicable for more complex or new-to-market products benefiting from such a high-touch sales model.

The two most common alternatives are home shopping networks (i.e., QVC) and infomercials. Home shopping networks offer a captive audience, live product demonstration and rich data analytics. This combination enables rapid iteration of messaging based on near real-time sales data. QVC, for example, boasts an 80+ million household audience to its 24/7 storefront. One well-known consumer products success story in this channel would be Bare Escentuals ( BARE - news - people ), the mineral-based beauty products company that began marketing its products on the network in 1997. However, lesser known companies such as Kim & Scott's pretzels (20+ appearances selling hundreds of thousands of pretzels) also have met with strong success.

Infomercials offer similar advantages to home shopping networks, with a twist. First, longer formats make them even more applicable for complicated sales models (i.e., devices, new platforms of products, new categories). Second, higher investment costs in the form of production make them more appropriate for later-stage tests versus a home shopping placement. Sure, there are examples of products like the Thighmaster destined for a lifespan in the world of late-night television. But, infomercials have also served as stepping stones for many products that have gone on to reach broader audiences. Looking for examples? Think of products like OxiClean (now distributed broadly in FDM channels) and Proactiv available online and through kiosks.

Consider Sampling Services

New product testing services provide another alternative for testing consumer reactions to early product ideas. Sampling services often cater to early adopters seeking the newest products on the market. While these solutions do not offer insight on pricing or at-the-shelf behavior, they do offer manufacturers the opportunity to glean valuable early perspectives on certain dimensions (i.e., formulation, packaging, marketing) before a product is ready for the mass market.
Other advantages of such services include being quick to launch, having built-in consumer bases and incorporating a feedback protocol. Several such services focusing on beauty have been gaining traction in recent years. One example is New Beauty, which offers a quarterly "TestTube" of high-end beauty products to subscribers for $29.95. After receiving the items, NewBeauty's members are invited to provide their reviews of products online. Another is BeautyFix, which combines a high-end quarterly sampling service ($49.99) with an expert panel and a beauty-focused community.

Remember that Good Things Come in Small Boxes

When key assumptions relate to at-the-shelf purchasing behavior or competitive dynamics, a more traditional shelf setting is required. In these cases, small independent retail outlets provide a great alternative for under-the-radar testing of new products. For personal care products, spas and salons can provide very relevant data points. For food products, self-serve restaurants, gourmet stores or health food stores are a good bet. For beverages, bodegas or self-serve restaurants get the job done. All of these settings can provide consumer insights similar to the traditional channel shelf in a smaller-scale experiment, often with the added advantage of providing feedback from the proprietor or salesperson.

Get Focus Fast with a Pop-Up Shop

Have a defined sense of your foothold consumer but unsure if the concept will resonate? Setting up a "pop-up shop" in close proximity to your target audience can quickly provide valuable insights at a low price tag. Further, this approach does not require a retail partner to buy-in. Of course, such an atypical buying environment can distort results, so pop-up shops should certainly be only one tool in a broader range of experiments, primarily appropriate for validating foothold consumer interest.

Think broadly and you'll surely find that appropriate venues can be found for almost all consumer segments. Interested in college kids? Try a university campus or bookstore. P&G did just that when testing Swash with such consumers. Aiming at athletes? Outside a gym might be a good bet. Have your sights on parents of young kids? A community fair will surely provide a captive audience. Urban youth? Hit the local basketball courts. Of course, approval should be gained in advance of setting up shop, but in many instances you will find that stakeholders are very open to the notion.

Another twist on the physical pop-shop is to leverage a vending kiosk or a mobile truck offering. A recent, interesting example of this type of approach is the Coke Freestyle beverage dispenser. Through this novel vending machine, Coke is able to offer over 100 different varieties of beverages (i.e., soda, tea, juice and water) by combining different "micro-doses" from about 30 cartridges in the machine.
Yes, the concept offers mass customization and drives much greater choice for the consumer. Beyond that, however, the machine offers Coke the opportunity to experiment with different flavors and beverages and to get instant feedback on consumer uptake by geography through RFID technology present on the cartridge. Of course, this type of vending experiment offers enormous cost savings versus the traditional approach of testing a concept by bottling and pushing through the traditional distribution channel to separate winners from losers.

Secrets Of The Self-Made Billionaire 2009-Donald Trump

2009-12-10T09:59:00.005+08:00

Secrets Of The Self-Made 2009
Twenty-Two Questions For Donald Trump
Saddle up for some secrets of this self-made billionaire.

Net Worth: $2 billion
Age: 63
Source of Wealth: Real estate

What's the biggest business blunder you've ever made, and what did you learn from it?

Buying a yacht. It was an investment I couldn't wait to get rid of.

What's the one thing every first-time entrepreneur should know?

They should be prepared to go it alone--being an entrepreneur is not a group effort. It requires everything you've got.

What's the last book or article you read that you'd recommend to other entrepreneurs?

Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats thoroughly covers the process of thinking, and it's a way to avoid blind spots if you are thinking alone. He coined the expression "lateral thinking," and this book provides a comprehensive approach to using your brain in an efficient and effective way.

Mr. Trump, any advice on a Deed in Lieu that has been going on for over 9 months?

It's a sad joke, however it's my families sad joke. Should we just let them foreclose? We live in another state now....

What one job should every person have to do at least once in their life?

Work in an emergency room, or observe one.

How do you know when to keep fighting or to cut bait?

That's an instinct that can be developed, but it's definitely an instinct that we all have. Paying attention to the signals is what is important--and heeding them.

Will/should the U.S. have universal health care?

That very much depends on how it is handled at the core level--which is extremely complex at this point. It's not clear enough yet.

What will be the new retirement age for 2009 grads?

People who love what they're doing don't retire, so I hope there won't be a retirement age. That would indicate a large group of dynamic people who remain contributors to our nation and the world.

Finish this sentence: The United States' role as the leader of the free world depends upon ...

A very sound economic system at home and leadership that is internationally astute.

Should the government have a say on executive compensation?

In some cases, yes. If the government has bailed companies out, they should have a say as to how those funds are used. Being bailed out doesn't mean it's party time.

Gold: Hoard it, trade it or avoid it?

Hoard it if you have it.

You have $100 million to spend in real estate, what do you buy and where?

I'd buy Trump condominiums. They stand the test of time. The economy and the cities will recover--I'd go for New York, Chicago and Las Vegas.

Are we in a sucker's rally?

The bottom line is, we have to rally. That applies to the market and everything else.

You wake up dead broke tomorrow--what do you do?

Realize right then that there are still opportunities out there--and make a plan.

What keeps you awake at night?

Thinking about the world and my deals!

What's the biggest threat to your industry?

Fear. People sometimes don't realize that real estate runs in cycles. That's normal.

By the time a trend appears in the mainstream press, is it too late for investors to capitalize on it?

Not necessarily. Trends can have a long life span. Everyone thought reality TV would bite the dust within a couple of years, and that hasn't been the case.

What 21st-century invention (discovered or not) has the greatest potential to change our lives?

Computer science and technology will continue to evolve and involve us in increasingly diverse ways.

Who helped you the most in getting you to where you are today?

My parents. They were wonderful examples, and I learned a great deal from observing their work ethic and integrity in their daily lives.

How much vacation time to do you take each year?

I don't take vacations, but I golf on weekends year round, which is like a vacation except that I own my own courses so I'm always finding ways to improve them. It's a labor of love, which gives me energy.

What is your benchmark of success? When did you reach it?

Success is being pleased with your efforts. When I opened Trump Tower in 1983, it was a beginning, and I still haven't reached my peak.

At this point, does money still motivate you?

As a scorecard more than anything. I don't need any more money, so the challenge and the subsequent achievement is the motivator. I love making deals.

Describe your life in five words.

I am a happy man. Make that six words: I am a very happy man.

Secrets of this self-made billionaire.-R.J.Kirk

2009-12-10T09:49:00.003+08:00

Twenty-Two Questions For R.J. Kirk
Saddle up for some secrets of this self-made billionaire.

Net Worth: $1.55 billion
Age: 55
Source of Wealth: Pharmaceuticals

What's the biggest business blunder you've ever made, and what did you learn from it?

I have on a couple of occasions permitted continued investment in a small company after the time that I had become convinced that the investment was unlikely to provide a return. At the time, I thought that perhaps I should give the younger members of my investment team, avid supporters of the little companies, the opportunity to "prove me wrong." This qualifies as a blunder because (1) there is absolutely no satisfaction in being proved correct while participating in the destruction of value, (2) if my organization must produce value by proving me wrong, I probably should leave and (3) there are more than a sufficient number of good opportunities concerning which our team is in full agreement, and focusing on these investments always will be the right idea. The lessons (unfortunately, these are lessons that I have had to learn more than once) is that investment (of time, money or any resource) should never be governed by any sense of inertia, and if you are on a team you should play like a team.

What's the one thing every first-time entrepreneur should know?

That the business world is full of "received wisdom," i.e., that the opinions of various business experts are often informed by untested propositions that eventually will be shown to be wrong. (Needless to say, this is per force true of most of the opinions I am passing along here.) The entrepreneur should be prepared to draw on many types of expertise but always with a view to building his case "from the bottom up," always bearing in mind the old saw: "Nobody knows nothing." Since no one else really knows, maybe you have a chance to figure it out.

What's the last book or article you read that you'd recommend to other entrepreneurs?

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, by Jack Weatherford (2004).

What one job should every person have to do at least once in their life?

Sell. Ideally, the experience would be on a sales floor and in a job working on pure commission, in competition with others who have that same job.

How do you know when to keep fighting or to cut bait?

One may only know when the final result is known. If the question is meant to ask how one decides in advance whether to persevere against challenge, the fundamental answer is that one must ask himself whether the application of effort can produce a good outcome. We often may observe people persevering in the hope that the world will somehow change to an environment that is more promising for this particular work, e.g., that the investment climate will improve, that the value of some type of thing, whether real estate or securities, will rise generally. To such people (and we all have been in this group at one time or another), I like to point out that if you are able to make such macroeconomic wagers, you should simply play an appropriate index that is reflective of your view and skip all the hard work. One should therefore concentrate his work into areas in which he is convinced that his efforts will make the difference between success and failure.

Will/should the U.S. have universal health care?

Yes, it will; no, it should not--no more than it should offer universal food, universal housing, universal transportation or any other communistic provisioning. The history of private enterprise and state enterprise convincingly demonstrates the folly of such state-run initiatives. I certainly understand why politicians want to do it, however, and that is why I believe it will occur.

What will be the new retirement age for 2009 grads?

I think that retirement on account of age alone will disappear as a convention.

Finish this sentence: The United States' role as the leader of the free world depends upon ...

Respect for individual liberty, private property and the rule of law.

Should the government have a say on executive compensation?

No. I do not understand the suggestion that society can be made better by providing less incentive to competitive individuals in private enterprise. I can easily understand, however, that American industry can be forced to become as mediocre as our government is by instilling within it the same sort of norms that have enforced mediocrity there.

Gold: Hoard it, trade it or avoid it?

I have no view on this topic.

You have $100 million to spend in real estate, what do you buy and where?

I would buy out of the obligation to do such a thing.

Are we in a sucker’s rally?

Answering this requires a macroeconomic forecast that has at least a 50% chance of being wrong.

You wake up dead broke tomorrow--what do you do?

The same thing that I did today and that I shall do tomorrow in any case.

What keeps you awake at night?

I sleep well, but I have plenty of anxiety about succeeding in the things we have undertaken.

What’s the biggest threat to your industry?

Increasing regulatory requirements and the steadily weakening intellectual property regime cause me to wonder whether my countrymen really want the remaining unmet human health needs addressed.

By the time a trend appears in the mainstream press, is it too late for investors to capitalize on it?

Far from it, but the best bet usually would be to go contra the reported trend. The more nonsense I have heard about supposedly "green" energy alternatives (that cost five times as much as hydrocarbon based fuels), for example, the more I have realized what a great investment oil and gas infrastructure must be.

What 21st-century invention (discovered or not) has the greatest potential to change our lives?

It is far too early in the century to call that, but, based on what I believe today, one area that is likely to give rise to a great number of innovations is what I am calling the Second Age of Biotech. For its first 30 years, biotech focused on the transcribed portion of the genome (genes) because of the obvious utility of their expression by-products (proteins). Increasingly, however, we are going to see biotech focus on the other, more interesting parts of the genome, which relate principally to its regulatory motifs. As our understanding of these essential logic controllers becomes more comprehensive (we are only scratching the surface today), we should be able to introduce an increasing amount of conditionality and "tightness of activity" to our customized production cells and to human therapeutics, thus spawning revolutionary changes in materials science, agriculture and health care.

Who helped you the most in getting you to where you are today?

My father, Joseph J. Kirk, was a great example of what a man could be. A high school drop-out who, at age 16, lied about his age in order to join the Air Force, he always held multiple jobs to provide for his family, to save and invest and to improve the lives of all whom he knew. I do not believe that anyone who knew him failed to believe himself better off for the experience.

How much vacation time to do you take each year?

I avoid enforced leisure. I have considered one of my personal missions to be "the optimization of the average day" and I have been successful enough at that to consider the typical day to be wonderful.

What is your benchmark of success? When did you reach it?

I do not possess even the bench on which to make such a judgment. It is for others to say whether I am useful or not.

At this point, does money still motivate you?

Money never motivated me, but seeing something that I had a hand in creating turn into a structure that is tangible to others, e.g., within which people live and raise their families, is a thrill beyond all imagining. Whether selling a greeting card or a motorcycle or building a company, one finds satisfaction throughout life in seeing things become more and more real as they reverberate into the world.

Describe your life in five words.

I decided to be happy.

Randal J. Kirk on the Forbes 400 Richest List

Secrets Of The Self Made Billionaire 2009 -John Paul De Joria

2009-12-10T09:36:00.004+08:00

Secrets Of The Self Made 2009
Twenty-Two Questions For John Paul DeJoria
Saddle up for some secrets of this self-made billionaire.

Net Worth: $4 billion
Age: 63
Source of Wealth: Hair products, tequila

What's the biggest business blunder you've ever made, and what did you learn from it?

Investing with someone I knew and thought I could trust. I did not check where the money went, and I lost it. Lesson learned is if you ever invest with someone you know, follow through in the months following to see where the money went, not just what they told you.

What's the one thing every first-time entrepreneur should know?

Be prepared for a lot of rejection. This way you don't give up.
What's the last book or article you read that you'd recommend to other entrepreneurs?

What one job should every person have to do at least once in their life?

Go out cold-calling and sell someone something.

How do you know when to keep fighting or to cut bait?

When you are no longer having fun and you have tried enthusiastically at least 100 times to get something going.

Will or should the U.S. have universal health care?

Yes, everyone deserves to have national health care in a great nation such as ours. We just need to find ways to do it and not be overtaxed.

What will be the new retirement age for 2009 grads?

Seventy-plus.

Finish this sentence: The United States' role as the leader of the free world depends upon ...

Our ability to be honest and still remain extremely strong.

Should the government have a say on executive compensation?

No, let free enterprise work.

Gold: Hoard it, trade it or avoid it?

You'd be safe to hold 5% of your assets and savings in gold and silver. Insurance for the future.

You have $100 million to spend in real estate. What do you buy and where?

Sixty percent in commercial or industrial real estate with at least 80% to 85% rented and a triple net lease yielding at least an 8% return. Thirty percent in rental housing property with the same return. Ten percent in farmland.

Are we in a sucker's rally?

I believe that the present stock market is a little overvalued for today's economy. If you look one year ahead, it may be a good time to buy.

You wake up dead broke tomorrow--what do you do?

Go out and find a job--any job, in any field possible. Got to eat.

What keeps you awake at night?

Sometimes jet lag when I travel.

What's the biggest threat to your industry?

At Paul Mitchell, in many cases, it's black market and counterfeits of our products in drug stores and supermarkets. We only sell Paul Mitchell in professional salons.

By the time a trend appears in the mainstream press, is it too late for investors to capitalize on it?

No, a trend is something that lasts for a while. The free advertising has already started.

What 21st-century invention (discovered or not) has the greatest potential to change our lives?

Bio breakthroughs in DNA that will lead to curing most diseases and give us a longer and better quality of life.

Who helped you the most in getting you to where you are today?

N/A

How much vacation time to do you take each year?

Two to four weeks.

What is your benchmark of success? When did you reach it?

I was able to pay all of my bills at Paul Mitchell on time. It took about two years after starting Paul Mitchell to get there.

At this point, does money still motivate you?

Yes, I can do more things with it to create more jobs and opportunities as well as lend a helping hand. It goes back to the saying of "Give a man a fish, and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and you have fed him for a lifetime."

Describe your life in five words.

Very lucky and happy human.

John Paul DeJoria on the Forbes 400 Richest List

World's Friendliest Countries

2009-12-10T09:29:00.003+08:00

World's Friendliest Countries
Rebecca Ruiz,
These nations are the most hospitable to expatriates, according to a new report.

The Middle East has long had a reputation for being one of the world's perennial trouble spots. But for expatriates, the tiny Persian Gulf county Bahrain ranks as one of the most welcoming places to work.

That's the surprising result of a new survey of 3,100 expatriates conducted by HSBC Bank ( HBC - news - people ). Bahrain ranked first in one key measure of how easy it is for expatriates to set up a new life for their families. It received high marks from expats who like the country's easy access to modern health care, decent and affordable housing, and network of social groups that expatriates can join.

Canada, which ranked first in a similar survey last year, fell to second place on HSBC's integration score, which measures how easily foreigners and their families can settle into a new country. Australia, Thailand and Malaysia rounded out the top five. Foreign workers in these countries found it easy to make local friends and said they enjoyed a higher quality of life than in their native countries.

Behind the Numbers

HSBC's Expat Explorer survey was conducted between February and April 2009. Survey respondents were from the U.S., Europe and elsewhere and lived in more than two dozen countries and on four continents. They ranked their new homes based on 23 factors, including food, entertainment, health care, commute and education. Of those measures, HSBC selected eight to create its so-called "integration score," a snapshot of which countries are most welcoming to expats.

Click here to see full list.
World's Friendliest Countries

It is possible that Bahrain's first-place finish is a fluke. Only 31 expats working in Bahrain participated in the survey, vs. more than 450 respondents from the United Kingdom. Bahrain ranked as the best country to join local community groups and coordinate health care. Respondents found it less easy to make local friends and learn the languages (Arabic, Farsi and Urdu), but the country ranked in the top five when it came to finding a home, setting up finances, and finding good schools.

The United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom received some of the poorest scores on the integration scale. Expats in the Emirates reported finding it difficult to join local community groups; only 39% of respondents made local friends compared to 76% of respondents living in other countries. Foreign workers in England complained about the challenges of finding affordable housing.

Often foreigners will be surprised to learn that I am Canadian. When I ask then why the anwser will be along those lines; you're so friendly, no one has ever invited us...

Suzanne Garber, COO of the Americas Region for International SOS, a firm that provides medical and logistical assistance to overseas employees, says surveys like these give potential expats an overarching view of living in various countries.

But she says that family life is the leading indicator of whether or not an expat assignment will be successful. Many overseas stints end prematurely because an employee's family feels disconnected from the new country and has trouble handling basic tasks like refilling prescriptions, driving around town or dealing with the local police.

"The concerns are pretty much the same no matter where you are," says Garber. "You have to make sure the family's life is stable and secure."

Best Practice and Good Practice

2009-12-10T01:34:00.001+08:00

Best Practice and Good Practice

Introduction

To do or perform habitually or customarily; make a habit of: practices courtesy in social situations.

To do or perform (something) repeatedly in order to acquire or polish a skill: practice a dance step.

To give lessons or repeated instructions to; drill: practiced the students in handwriting.
To carry out in action; observe:

Definition - Good

Being positive or desirable in nature; not bad or poor: a good experience;
Having the qualities that are desirable or distinguishing in a particular thing
Serving the desired purpose or end;
Superior to the average

Definition - Best

Surpassing all others in excellence, achievement, or quality; most excellent: the best performer

Most satisfactory, suitable, or useful; most desirable: the best solution
Most highly skilled

What is Best Practice?

Best Practice suggests that there is a technique, method, process, activity, incentive or reward that is more effective at delivering a particular outcome than any other.

The idea is that with proper processes, checks, and testing, a desired outcome can be delivered with fewer problems and unforeseen complications.

Best practices can also be defined as the most efficient (least amount of effort) and effective (best results) way of accomplishing a task, based on repeatable procedures that have proven themselves over time for large numbers of people.

Best Practice is considered by some as a business buzzword used to describe the process of developing and following a standard way of doing things that multiple organizations can use for management, policy, and especially software systems. This is often true within the public sector.

What are the benefits of Best Practice?

A best practice strategy is one where the organization strives to copy those deemed to be proficient in a given activity. This can help your organization to:

• Respond more quickly to changes or innovations in your market space
• Become more competitive
• Increase sales and develop in new markets
• Manage and reduce costs and become more efficient
• Improve the skills of your people
• Use appropriate technology more effectively
• Reduce waste and improve quality

Tools to improve Best Practice

There are several business tools that you can use to achieve management best practice, including:

• Networking
• External benchmarking
• Quality and other external awards
• Strategic planning
• Performance management

Achieving Best Practice

We know that Best Practice means finding - and using - the best ways of working to achieve your organizations objectives. It involves keeping up to date with the ways that successful organizations operate and measuring your ways of working against those used by the market leaders.

Methods of Best Practice include:

• Benchmarking - learning from and through the experience of others.
• Standards - Best practice through achievement of standards.

Source: rapidbi.com

Ways to raise your confidence

2009-12-10T01:32:00.000+08:00

Ways to raise your confidence

Is your confidence intensity is where you’d like it to be?

Many relationship issues occur from a short of of confidence or low self-esteem. little self-confidence can put in withdrawal, lack of closeness and even unfaithfulness in a relationship.

So, how can you amplify your confidence? Well, self-confidence is not a product that can be plucked from a tree or pulled from a bookshelf. You see, having advantage for ones self is all about self-love and that comes from inside. So, in numerous ways achieving self confidence is an expedition within.

However, there are various things you can do that will help to catch you the right track. To get you moving in the right path I’ve included the following “Ways to raise your Confidence”…

1. Think about a name that is confident and act, speak and walk similar to him or her. mock-up their mannerisms and activities. It works for them; it will work for you.

2. Smile a lot added. That doesn’t stand for putting a silly grin on your face! But smile when you walk down the lane, when you meet up people and generally be better-off even if you’re not feeling that way.

3. Gain knowledge from the past; don’t bang yourself up about it. It’s gone; it’s by no means coming back. Instead learn from it for next time.

4. Purchase yourself some new clothes, get your locks done, and care for yourself to something new. It will make you feel superior and will give your ego a boost.

5. Are you ready for situations? Are you prepared enough to meet up any test that may come up? Are you geared up for that meeting, that presentation, that job interview, when you meet somebody for the first time? If not, get to it.

6. Cooperate to your strengths. Know what you are excellent at and expose yourself to these opportunities at all opportunities - because you’re superior at it, you’ll enjoy it and have more poise.

7. Look up your weaknesses. Know and understand what these are and put a plan in place to improve them over time.

8. Gain knowledge of how to say no to people. Don’t be frightened, you’ve got nothing to be afraid of. Just watch the response on their face after you’ve said it the first time and there will be no going back.

9. Be positive. Gaze on the “can do” side of things rather than the “can’t do”. You’ve proficient lots in your life and you will accomplish lots additional in the future.

10. Be in charge of your opinion at all times. What is a thought? It’s just a query that you’ve asked yourself and the consideration is you’re answer. If you’re having negative thoughts, you’re probably asking a negative issue. Alter the questions to be more positive.

11. Whenever you experience a negative thought coming, discontinue, THINK, and say is this really vital in the grand scheme of things. A lot of the instance it isn’t. A lot of people in life major in minor things!

After you have done the superlative you can to address the connection issues, you can go back to the reasons you are having these discussions in the first place — the raise, help, change in job responsibility or shift you have been seeking. Only now you will find a human being with whom it is much easier to deal. Where earlier there may have only been stony silence, worry and stress, there should be extra open dialogue and difficulty sorting.

Efficient and good operational relationships are essential to productive negotiations. If they do not survive, you have to take time to expand them. It will never be trouble-free, but it is always priceless.

source : arxlove.com

10 Simple Steps to Self-Improvement

2009-12-10T01:30:00.001+08:00

10 Simple Steps to Self-Improvement

When you came to the 40-year stage in your life, you will suddenly realize many things. You get to ask yourself questions.

How will it be when I get to the end of my life? How do I feel about the life I lived?

Then someone gave you some self improvement articles while telling you that it is not yet too late. Does that mean anything to you? You bet it does. The feeling of anxiety that will come next is just normal. Then you will feel confused because life had felt so good. You were happy, had a successful marriage, two wonderful kids, and a job you reasonably enjoyed. What was my problem?

It was your glass ceiling…The "practical" and fear-based side that had convinced you all along that your passion and dreams had died.

Here are top 10 basic steps that can help you move your life to the next level. This self improvement article will assist you in breaking through your own glass ceiling to create the life you really want.

1. GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION TO DREAM

You probably had no problem dreaming as a kid. What happened to your ability to imagine and dream about what you want and who you want to be? When was the last time that you caught yourself daydreaming and appreciated it?

2. STOP LOOKING OUTSIDE YOURSELF FOR HAPPINESS

Stop looking outside yourself for happiness. Look inside. Increase your self-awareness. Get curious about who you are at the core. Cultivate and nurture a relationship with yourself.

3. COVER THE BASICS

Take the time to address your personal needs. How can you focus on thriving in your life if you are in survival mode? Set up that meeting with a financial advisor; get your space organized, clean up the details that are wasting your energy.

4. EMBRACE YOUR PAST AND MOVE ON

Embrace your past and move on. Shift from "why it happened" to what I want to do about it now. Asking: “what" is not a very empowering question? Asking what or how I want to proceed can be much more powerful and produce forward movement.

5. REMEMBER THAT YOU ARE NOT ALONE

It is easy to feel overwhelmed with life. Seek support. Read more self improvement articles. They might help you figure about some things that are puzzling you.

6. REMEMBER TO BE GRATEFUL AND COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS

What is working right in you life? Make a list. Set aside a bit of time everyday to acknowledge what or who you are grateful for. The more you practice gratitude, the more you attract into your life things to be grateful for.

7. COURT YOUR PASSION

You still have your passions though it has been a while since you may have felt it flow. When are you the most alive and joyful in your life? Who do you most admire and what do they inspire in you?

8. TAKE ACTION AND TAKE RISKS

Take action and take a risk. All the inspiration in the world is not enough to make you move your life to the next level. It takes inspired action to do that.

9. KEEP BREATHING

You probably forget to take deep full breaths. We have all learned to constrict our breathing in response to stress. According to many self improvement articles, we not only need oxygen to stay alive, we need oxygen to give us energy and keep us healthy. Right now take 5 deep, full breaths.

10. DO SOMETHING FOR YOURSELF

Call a friend, take a bubble bath, take yourself to an art museum or schedule a whole day out in nature. Put on some great music and dance till you drop.

Successful Leadership in a Small Business

2009-12-10T01:28:00.001+08:00

Successful Leadership in a Small Business

Practicing positive successful leadership in a small business, especially for the founder/owner, takes great skill and talent. In order to know what to do successfully in the start up phase and beyond takes understanding and self analysis.

Some entrepreneurs do not know themselves well enough to see their own faults. These faults can and will interfere in the success of the business.

The most crucial point in a small business where self analysis of the leader is necessary is during the transition to the professional management stage. The three important elements of people management, planning and the customer are built around the vision, mission statement and values of the company. As the entrepreneur grows the company, the leader must identify his/her need for control, sense of distrust, need for applause and defensive operations, also known as the “darker sides of the entrepreneur".

These characteristics if not monitored or unbeknownst to the leader can result in distorted reasoning and action making the transition (which is necessary for organizational growth) extremely difficult, if not impossible. Due to the leader's inability to recognize his/her destructive behaviors, the organization may be destined for perpetual smallness or destruction. Needs such as hiring more employees, growing additional branches and hiring managers to oversee teams of employees begin to appear. As a small business earns success and recognition, issues arise.

The entrepreneur generally desires such growth and success and happily appoints managers to continue training and developing and maintaining business relations. If the leader is unable to relinquish control, the managers will be unable to accomplish goals in alignment with the vision and mission of the leader. A large part of providing a successful mission statement is emulating the freedom to accomplish those actions as well as relinquishing control to those the leader hired.

Inconsistencies and deficiencies of the leader are well documented factors which limit the growth of entrepreneurial firms. An entrepreneur struggles with issues of authority and control and structure can be stifling. If the leader is unaware of this behavior, the employees will disengage and eventually leave, which costs the company money in recruiting and training of new employees.

If the control issues are allowed to continue, the leader may attempt to pull back the reins on those he/she hired to manage his/her small organization's growth. Thus, micro-managing and removing any control or power from the managers themselves. As entrepreneurs sometimes do, planning is done on a gut instinct. The transition to a professional management organization is no longer based solely on gut instinct. This transits the organization to rely upon several professionals sharing their knowledge and experience to guide the small business planning. If the entrepreneurial leader is unable to allow this to happen, the transition to a professional management organization ceases.

This behavior also affects customers. The integrity and enthusiasm that once existed deteriorates with the controlling, distrusting and defensive characteristics of the entrepreneurial leader. As customers receive lower quality service, unmet expectations and dissatisfied employees, the overall organizational reputation may be lost. The darker side of the entrepreneur negatively affects the small business, the employees and customers. It is vital for a leader to analyze his strengths and weaknesses in order to maintain a successful small business.

About The Author:

Robert II Smith has spent more than 19 years working as a professor at New York University. Now he spends most of his time with his family and shares his experience about English papers. Robert II Smith is a right person that can help you with Management papers.

Market Research on a Budget

2009-12-10T01:23:00.002+08:00

Market Research on a Budget

Research is the study of groups of people that you would like to sell your products or services to. Spending time to do Market Research minimizes risk and often improves your chances of success.

Researching your target market can provide you with sound and objective data. The problem is that market research can be extremely expensive. So how can you do the research if you are on a tight budget? Low-cost market research is not impossible, let me show you how.

First off, let's consider the things we need to look for when conducting our market research. Your target market should have at least four common characteristics. They are:

1. My target market has a particular need.
2. My target market has enough money to purchase my products or services.
3. My target market has decision making power.
4. My target market has access to my products and services.

In order to determine these characteristics you must spend time researching and asking yourself the following questions:

• My customers have a particular need. What is that need?
• My customers have enough money to buy what I am selling. Who needs and can afford what you are offering?
• My customers have decision making power. Who has the authority to say yes to what I'm offering?
• My customers have access to my products and services. How accessible are my products or services to my target market?

Where Should You Begin Your Market Research?

First Resource: Secondary Research

The best place to start looking for secondary research is online. Visit association web sites that are aligned with your industry. If you are in the consumer industry, visit the government agencies because you will find all kinds of consumer information on their sites. A great resource that you won't want to miss is the U.S. Census Bureau. Keep in mind that secondary research is not done for you, so some of the information and answers may not be applicable to you. Whoever it was that commissioned the study had their own questions that they wanted to get answered. The information you will find might be in the ballpark but not on first base.

Second Resource: Your Customers

Put together a questionnaire and have your employees ask prospects, customers, vendors, and suppliers to complete it. A couple of questions you could ask are:

• Do you like our products or services?
• What are we doing right?
• What could we improve?/This method of research also works very well when visiting trade shows. Take a walk around the hall and spend time listening to people's conversations and ask questions. Spending time doing this helps you gain insight to what your competitors are doing.

This method of research also works very well when visiting trade shows. Take a walk around the hall and spend time listening to people's conversations and ask questions. Spending time doing this helps you gain insight to what your competitors are doing.

You can also conduct:

1. Open-ended interviews with your customers.
2. Surveys
3. Focus Groups

Third Resource: Comparable Markets

Look for other comparable markets and share the expense of a study. Remember you want to do this with comparable markets but not competitors. For example, if you are a copywriter, find a company that does print advertising. Once you find someone, sit down and decide what information would be beneficial to the both of you and hire someone to do the study.

Author : Laura Lake
Source : marketing.about.com

Selling 101-Part 4- Overcoming Buying Objections

2009-12-08T22:49:00.001+08:00

Selling 101
Overcoming Buying Objections

At the top of this article, you assembled a list detailing each of your product's benefits. That was the fun part. Now you have to look at the other side. What objections might you face in a sales call? Salespeople are like baseball players: Generally, their failures at the plate outnumber their successes. But like good hitters, salespeople raise their average by examining their failures and adjusting the next time they come to bat. Always ask yourself why a particular sale didn't happen. What kinds of remarks have you heard from prospective buyers that kept them from going with your product? These are the objections you weren't able to overcome in your sales effort.

You should be able to put together a list of the six to 10 most common objections that pop up during sales presentations. When you have that list, write down your best responses to each of those objections. Some responses may involve several different elements. Some objections may be hard to respond to in a positive way. You've just got to do your best in formulating your answers.

For instance, if the objection is that a piece of equipment is too slow, maybe you can focus attention on other strong points that more than make up for this: perhaps less downtime, lower error rate, greater ease of operation and therefore less training required, and so on. Until you come up with an adequate response, that objection will continue to kill sales.

Once you've developed your list of responses, you must be ready to use them on the spot. You can't call prospects back in four days to tell them, "You know, I was thinking about that bad reaction you had to the high failure rate of our pumps, and I think you're overemphasizing its importance." You have to have all that sales ammunition with you in the room when you're making the presentation.

Never forget that your job is not just selling the equipment or service. In the minds of the prospective buyers, you're the company, and they're judging the company by your performance. Respond smoothly to an objection, and they'll be impressed with your professionalism (and that of your company). But if you get flustered by an objection, or leave without giving an adequate response, you will create the opposite impression.

If you see the same couple of objections arising time and time again, make the smart move: Eliminate that objection before it arises. Build a preemptive strike against that objection right into the core of your presentation, so your prospects won't be distracted by the thought of an apparent weakness in your product or service. As you're able to refine your presentation based on experience, you'll be able to eliminate a good percentage of the common objections you run into. Only then will your sales effort really begin to take off.

Getting to the Dotted Line

Getting someone to say yes is not always easy. And, as anyone with any sales experience knows, everything can be cordial and positive during the presentation. But once it's time for a decision, once someone has to write a check, things can turn dark.

If you see some reluctance to say yes, get involved in helping them make the decision. An effective way to wrap the sale up--without appearing overly aggressive--is to recap why you're there, the need that the company recognizes, and how your product satisfies that need in all its aspects. If you've done your homework well and made a skilled and informative presentation, you should have left them right at the door of making the decision. Respectfully ask them what's keeping them from making the decision right now: Are there senior people who have to approve the decision? Do they have to evaluate a competitor who's yet to present? Is there something about your product/service that they're unsure of? By the process of elimination, you should be able to trim away the possible reasons for delay.

Of course, many business decisions based on a presentation take some time. More often than not, you simply can't force the decision while you're there. If you're told that's the case, learn when you can expect a decision. Then tell them that you're looking forward to the possibility of working with them, and immediately send them a recap of your presentation with some new material--whatever you can pull together to show that your desire to provide them service is still on your mind.
Some salespeople have had success unlocking a sale with the direct question: "Do you want to purchase this service?" Follow it with silence, and let the prospect take over the conversation.

If you sense a negative decision in the making, suggest that you'll send them a recap of the meeting with your final best offer in a day or two. This will buy you some time to come up with a "Plan B."

Finally, let's assume for a moment that you don't make the sale. Your immediate course of action should be to call your contact, acknowledge the inevitable, and then ask if he or she can help you understand why the contract went to another company. This provides you with a real learning opportunity, in many ways more valuable than (although not, unfortunately, as financially rewarding as) winning the sale. Make it clear you're not disputing the decision or trying gamely to alter it. Mention how you put some work into the presentation, and you'd appreciate the chance to use your loss to improve the way you make the next presentation. Was it price? Was it product issues? Was it a superior presentation by a competitor? Probe to get specifics, which you should write up in a call report for later analysis. If you learn why people don't buy, then take steps to remedy either your presentation or the product itself.

If you do get the contract, your job is just starting in two ways. First, you've got to make arrangements to have the product or service actually delivered. Second, you now have a relationship to tend, new people to learn about and perhaps a new application in which to test your product or service. Congratulations.

Fill Out a Call Report

All salespeople hate to fill out call reports. They often feel they are being checked up on, that no one back at the office has to know the details of how the meeting went. Even sole proprietors hate call reports, and they have no one to report to. There's just something so archival and so seemingly unproductive about them.

In fact, call reports are prime marketing ore for future efforts. Think for a moment of the value you can glean from 200 call reports of recent sales presentations:

• Which companies have been approached, when and by whom
• What products they were exposed to
• Who attended the sales meeting--and who is responsible for purchasing your product
• Why they did or didn't decide on your company (assuming your salesperson followed up properly on a negative decision)
What can you do with this market intelligence?
• Study the successes to see what types of companies you're having better luck with. You can then intensify your efforts to make presentations to more of those companies.
• Study the failures to see what you can do to make your product more appealing to those types of companies. With good, concrete follow-up, you can--over time--enhance your product and alter your presentations for greater success.
• Use the unsuccessful presentations as a source for possible future sales activities. If you lost the ABC account pitch because your trucking firm didn't have enough experienced drivers, you can repitch the account when you get a little bigger.
• You know the people who hold key purchasing authority for your product. Keep them on a low-level direct-mail effort, to keep them informed of what's happening at your company.

Selling 101-Part 3 - B-to-B

2009-12-08T22:43:00.003+08:00

Selling 101
B-to-B: Giving an Effective Sales Presentation

Business-to-business sales usually involves giving a prearranged presentation, whether in person or on paper, of your product or service. This differs from retail sales to the general public, which is usually spontaneous and immediate.

In business-to-business environments, the selling and buying process is often not simple. Many times you'll never meet the person who will ultimately use your product, the person who'll authorize the purchase of your product, or the person who signs the check. If you're dealing directly with the buyer, consider yourself fortunate. You have to convince only one person of your product's suitability and of its superiority over competing products. If you've pulled together your product benefits properly, if you're talking to a buyer in a market that genuinely needs your product, and if you've positioned yourself appropriately against the competition, you should be in good shape.

However, you may be presenting a proposal to a selection committee of a large corporation. Several of the people present may have competing agendas you don't know about, or you may discover after making your pitch that no one in the room has the authority to say yes. You may be speaking to a purchasing agent who makes the decision based on agreed-upon objective criteria. In that case, all you can do is prepare the best proposal you can, all the while focusing on making the description of your product and your company match as closely as possible the demands of the proposal request.

Despite these difficulties, the bottom line is the same: Personal sales makes commerce happen. And if you are the one making the sales pitch--or if you supervise those who do--fine-tuning your presentation techniques can pump up your bottom line. If you have a meeting with a company, you know that, at the very least, you're being taken seriously and that you have a reasonable chance of coming away with the order. So what should you do? Here's a handful of tips from the experts.

Get informed: know the buyer. Are you presenting to a company that can conceivably use or afford your product or service? Just as a real estate agent must qualify prospects, so salespeople must maximize their time by prequalifying potential clients and eliminating those that don't have the financial resources, that have proved themselves bad credit risks, that have a business that doesn't match up well with the strengths of your product and so on. Focus on prospective buyers whom you have a reasonable chance of winning...and who are worth winning.

Then, once you're at the stage where you're making an oral or written presentation, ask yourself whether the person you're presenting to has the ability to say yes. If the person doesn't, you may be better off trying to work around that person and presenting to someone who can give you the go-ahead. Once you've set up a serious meeting with customers who have purchasing authority, ask your contact who's going to be there and what their stake in the decision is. Get your hands on an organizational chart so you have a feel for the hierarchy. What are the people in the meeting likely to be most interested in? For instance, if the finance person is there, direct your comments on financial payback and return on investment to him or her.

We're talking business politics here, but that doesn't surprise you, does it? You've got to scope out the terrain of the sales battle before you can give it your best shot, and you'll have more success in the major meetings--with significant dollars on the line--when you understand the situation you're confronting.

In addition to knowing whom you are presenting to, give some thought to why you are presenting. What is the company looking for? What is the current situation that's driving their request for your presentation? Is there anyone else who works with you in your office who might have an insight into this company and why they are having you make a presentation? Are you presenting along with other potential suppliers, or is it you or nothing? Are there other noncompetitive suppliers who might give you some information on what's happening inside your target company? If you are able to ask clarifying questions before the actual presentation (this is common in governmental work), don't miss the opportunity to come up with some questions to ask...just to establish a working relationship.

If presenting is something you do several times a week, you may not need to do much research or rehearsing. Let's face it, after a few months of presentations, you'll have your pitch down pat, and you'll have a good feel for the terrain of most sales situations.

Rehearse your pitch. If presentations are not something you do regularly, then you need to rehearse what you're going to say and how you're going to say it. Work with someone in the office, a good friend or your spouse to smooth out the flow of information and make yourself as concise as possible.

Most of us have been in presentations when the presenter was out of touch with his or her audience, rambling on long after any audience interest had left the room in despair. Think in bullet points and headlines. You want the attendees to come out of your presentation with just a handful of clear benefit statements about your product. Don't drown your competitive advantages in a lot of chatter about your company, your history or your golf game.

If you use equipment to make your presentation (flip charts, computer printouts, PowerPoint on a laptop), bulletproof your equipment and carry spares of essential parts like disks, bulbs and power cords. People tend to understand when you have a little technical trouble, but they do expect you to fix it. They're hiring you because of the resourcefulness of you and your products, right?

Get some sleep and eat your Wheaties. No matter how tireless your personality type, you've got to be your best when you're on stage. That means being well-rested, well-fed and relaxed. Get a good night's sleep beforehand, and eat breakfast. Get any materials prepared in advance, and proofread them carefully. Get near the presentation site early, relax with a cup of coffee or juice, and review your notes and your plan of action.

Once the meeting begins, you're expected to be the focus of attention. When people listen to a presentation, they're in a "receptive" mode--they expect to be informed and even entertained. You have to deliver the goods with style and high spirits. You're the driver...make this vehicle go where you want it to. Don't come out of the meeting wondering if you were too low-key.

Sell the benefits, not the features. We've been talking benefits for a while, and now's the time to put them to work. Key your entire presentation on the need your product satisfies, not on your superior technology, not on your well-trained staff, not on your wonderful reputation. What's in it for the people in the room? How will their company come out ahead if they choose to do business with you? What existing problem is this company wrestling with? This should lead your presentation. Your product is the answer.

Also, don't forget that the people you're presenting to also have a personal involvement in the sale. If they hire you or buy your product, will it be a feather in their cap? If they're at risk for choosing you over a better-known competitor, how can you reduce their exposure--extend a warranty, offer additional case histories, provide documentation to pass up the chain of command? Fine-tune your presentation to appeal to the individuals in the room as well as to the company they represent.

Invite a dialogue. When you start your presentation, outline how you plan to organize the meeting--and make sure your audience understands that they have a role beyond merely listening. You expect them to ask any questions they have, raise any objections they feel, outline special applications they may have for your product, and explain how they'd like the product integrated into their operation. By inviting and encouraging their participation, you enlist their help in figuring out all the ways your product or service can benefit them.

Be prepared for any objections. Sales objections give salespeople, especially new ones, the greatest difficulty. You're really rolling in your pitch. You think you're definitely receiving good vibes from the right side of the table. You're well ahead of schedule for your allotted presentation time. Then the mild-mannered fellow in the camel-hair suit scrapes his chair, raises his hand and with fixed eye says: "I just don't see how this will work for us. The specs seem in the ballpark, but you're a new company, unproven, and this piece of equipment is too important to us. We've got to go with a proven provider, even if we give away a bit in capacity. It's just too risky."

The smoke from the explosion clears. Maybe some of the other people at the table climb on board and reveal similar feelings. Maybe you draw some sympathy. Maybe the meeting freezes, with no one set on how to proceed.
If you can't handle high-inside-fastball objections, you're never going to be successful selling. The sales experts counsel a calm approach:

• Hear the objection out. Don't interrupt. Don't cut it short. Focus your attention on what's being said, taking some notes (without cutting eye contact for more than a brief period) so you capture all the details.

• Don't panic. People who object are at least taking you seriously. When you get in a presentation where everyone smiles at everything you are saying, you're in trouble. When people object, they're looking for more information, or they want you to clarify their perception of your product or service. You should be prepared for every objection with a killer response.

• Find something in the objection to validate. No matter whether it is well-founded or ridiculous, the objection must be taken seriously. You want to credit the questioner for mounting the objection. Acknowledge that you're a new and essentially unproven company, for example. In fact, you'd have the exact same objections if you were sitting where they are. If you need a few moments to gather your thoughts, respond to the objection with a clarifying question: "What kind of experience have you had with your existing equipment regarding downtime?" or "What's a doomsday scenario in your production? Let me see if I can address it." This technique will also help you zero in on the true nature of the objection.

• You've already developed a script with answers to every objection, right? Now's the time to pull that script up to the top of your mind and satisfy the objection-raiser. Go through it calmly, getting your inquirer's assent at every step of the way. When you're done addressing the objection, make sure the individual feels comfortable with how you handled it.

Talk money and ask for the business. You shouldn't end the meeting without addressing directly the issue of cost and terms. Some presenters hate to talk money, preferring to dance around the subject while focusing on the product and its benefits. I don't think that's effective. People want to know price, regardless of how little importance you try to attach to it. If your product is more expensive than the competition, make it a point to explain why, emphasizing the greater value the prospective customer will get from your product. If your product is less expensive than the competition, you should hammer away on that benefit, emphasizing how you're able to deliver top quality without charging a high price. Don't apologize for your price, either high or low.

Finally, you have to ask for the business. How does the sale happen? You can make the order form a part of your presentation kit and ask them to fill it out then and there. You can ask about which particular model they want to order. You can inquire as to which delivery timeline they're working with. Make what's called the "presumptive close," by which you presume you've been successful and are simply making arrangements for delivery. This can push some buyers over the edge into making an immediate decision.

Selling 101 - Part 2 -What's Your USP

2009-12-08T22:38:00.002+08:00

Selling 101
What's Your USP?

When you market your product, you must not only appeal to the customer (and to each type of customer separately), but you must distinguish yourself from the competition. In fact, most products that compete directly against each other share many of the same benefits. No brand of ice cream tastes "unpleasant." No infrared spectrometer talks about its "inaccuracy." All the products in a given category are likely to make a large number of similar benefits claims. So why would a customer choose one over another? There can be many reasons, of course, especially convenience (it's right in front of them). But often it's the USP, the unique selling proposition. It's the compelling benefit that shouts...no one else is like me!

What's unique about your product? What makes it stand out from the competition? What gives the customer a good and irresistible reason to select your product rather than those other fine products? If you're making ice cream, you can't base your whole appeal to the customer by simply saying "it tastes better"--unless you have some credible objective documentation that this is so. Perhaps you can claim your ingredients are uniquely fresh, or that the ice cream is handmade in some particular way, which makes it taste "better" or at least different than other ice creams. Look at Ben & Jerry's: They don't just market their ice cream; they market the structure of the company itself and its commitment to making charitable donations. This helps give them a unique profile in a crowded market.

Many companies base their selling pitch on what's unique about them. For years, Ivory Soap based all its advertising on its claim of being 99 44/ 100 percent pure...so pure it floats! Domino's and its two-for-the-price-of-one pizzas. The unique Volkswagen look, which, thinking small again, has returned.

Once you've established your product's range of benefits and distinguished it from the competition, can you sum all this up in one phrase or brief sentence? Such as "When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight," "Nothing runs like a Deere," "Better living through chemistry" or "Legendary engineering"?
If you can, then you are ready to take your case to the public. It's time to persuade them to buy.

Selling to the Public: The Four Pillars of Marketing

An old marketing adage says that nothing happens until someone buys something--in short, sales drive every aspect of business. In every company, the salespeople are the front-line troops. In the rough-and-tumble of the marketplace, the slickest manufacturing processes, the shrewdest marketing, the brightest corporate reputations won't make the sale without the face-to-face (at least usually) meeting of seller and buyer.

This is personal selling, and it's the most important and direct aspect of the marketing process, but it is not the only way you appeal to the public and persuade them to buy. While marketing in the large sense involves every aspect of your company, the sales side of marketing is made up primarily of these four aspects:

• Personal selling is face-to-face salesmanship, when you have the prospect in front of you. It includes retail sales, much professional service selling and a healthy percentage of business-to-business sales.

• Advertising is paying for media space or time in which to sell your product at a distance.

• Promotion is a short-term activity, directed at either the distributor or the purchaser, to boost sales for a limited time through special pricing or other offers. Of course, you hope the short-term increase also leads to an incremental gain. It can include advertising and personal selling.

• Public relations is the unpaid (but, alas, not cost-free) marketing effort you undertake to expose your product to potential customers and other interested parties through the press, trade media and special media-related events.

Personal selling, advertising and most promotion efforts are direct activities: In a straightforward manner, you're saying "Buy me!" Public relations is the soft sell, in which you take a visible role in the community and increase the public's general awareness of you.

Selling 101 - Part 1

2009-12-08T22:25:00.004+08:00

Selling 101

Don't let the sales process intimidate you. This thorough how-to will teach you how to focus on benefits, develop a USP, and deliver a killer sales presentation.
By Jack Ferrari

Editor's note: This article was excerpted from Successful Sales & Marketing.

OK, so you love your product. You have been around this market for a while, and--quite honestly--you have never seen a product so useful, so inexpensive, so long-lived and so visually attractive. Unfortunately, you are suffering from a condition that affects many businesspeople. Its principal symptom is a blinding lack of objectivity. If left untreated, it can result in the disappearance of entire businesses...company, staff and product, which fade till they become mere ghosts in the annals of business history.

Your customers remain proudly self-centered. They don't appreciate the glories of your product's reputation, the immense practicality of its design or the cleverness of its name. No, they're focused on their personal need. Maybe it's a car that's leaking oil. Or a child's sweater that needs mending. Or a bookkeeping system gone haywire. Or an old coffee pot that's died and gone to Colombia. What do they want? A solution to their problem, not a product. They want to be able to drive without dripping oil; they want something to keep their child warm; and they want an accurate financial report and a cup of java. You've got to present your product as the satisfaction to the need--the scratch to their itch. That, they can buy.

Features Vs. Benefits: The Key to Marketing

In the marketing "Hall of Big Ideas," the distinction between product features and benefits sits on a raised marble pedestal in the center room under a ring of spotlights. This distinction separates marketers and everyone else in the business world just as sharply as the Berlin Wall divided Berlin into East and West. Many entrepreneurs talk about their product in terms of its features: its capacity, color, strength, durability and other technical capabilities. Marketers (that's you) are different. They speak of the product, often as dramatically as possible, in terms of how it will benefit the customer. They describe the need the product will immediately fulfill, offering a vision of the wonderfully satisfied customer living his or her suddenly carefree life. Marketers make a living by wish fulfillment (or sometimes, so I've heard, by just the appearance of wish fulfillment).

Some companies think "benefit talk" is beneath them: "That's for retail types," they say. High-tech businesses, generally selling to technically sophisticated customers, sometimes feel a full-voiced recitation of cutting-edge product features is enough to make the sale. Not so. Every person responds most immediately to what they understand most easily--in this case, what the benefits of the features are. If you spell out the benefits to technical people, they don't have to calculate them themselves. Why make them work? You don't have to talk in baby talk. But be as obvious as you can. State your key competitive advantages as clearly as possible.
Some service businesses are also reluctant to think in terms of benefits--to their eventual calamity. Manufacturers at least have the physical product to talk about. Service providers don't, and they sometimes feel a deep-seated discomfort with the airy nature of what they offer. They often create esoteric jargon to glorify their "product" and make it appear more mysterious and complicated than it is

There's nothing wrong with this, except that when the jargon becomes too murky, it obscures the genuine value. As long as the jargon is benefit-oriented, no one suffers.

Benefits are the satisfaction of a need or desire. Let's take the example of a coffeemaker and study the difference between features and benefits.

What you're doing is translating from a very accurate product description to the words your customer wants to hear. You're quite literally translating from one language to another. A parched Parisian won't respond to "Want some water?" but you'll get his or her attention with "Voulez-vous de l'eau?" It's the same thing when you market a product: Customers may see you talking, but they won't become interested in what you're saying until you speak their language.

Study your product or service with this in mind, and then train your entire organization to appreciate the sometimes subtle difference in perception. The hydraulics engineer will boast of how many gallons of water a western dam holds, but regional residents will only focus on self-serving goodies like cheaper water, more electricity, fewer floods and more opportunities to take the boat out for a spin. Whenever you list a product's benefits, you're answering the age-old question: "What's in it for me?"

Once you master this distinction, you are halfway to becoming a marketing guru.

Compiling a Key Benefit Inventory

What are your products' key benefits? You must first develop an exhaustive list of every feature for each of your products. Grill your product people until you've got everything. Now sit down with your sales manager (of course, this might be just you and a legal pad) and translate, one by one, each feature into a very short benefit statement. Some may not translate. If one isn't "benefitable" after reasonable effort, just cross it off. But experience shows that 90 percent of product features can deliver benefits to some market.

Does each benefit apply equally to every market for a product? Lightweight all-weather jackets might pack an enormous appeal to a serious backpacker, but brilliant colors might clinch the sale to suburban teens. Categorize the benefits by the markets they appeal to most powerfully. Then rank them by importance within each market.

Once you have solidified this listing for each product by market, you have created the most powerful tool your sales force can carry. In every customer contact, your salespeople should deliver the full key benefit message. This works for retail sales just as well as business-to-business. Each carefully crafted benefit will appeal to various clients unequally--that's life. Price may mean everything to one customer, while availability might be the deal-breaker to another. You often can't know which issue might be driving a customer's decision. That's why it's critical to deliver the entire key benefit inventory at every sales opportunity--in sales presentations, in company literature, in displays. If you can't fit them all in (small ad, tight schedule or other reason), use the benefits by rank for the particular market you're addressing.

Key Appeal, Market by Market

Once you have your features translated into benefits, you've got to make sure that you know how important given benefits are to each type of customer. There are some things for which almost all of us are customers: restaurants, clothing, vehicles, watches and so on. Sometimes these items can be mass marketed: The manufacturer can apply the same appeal across a large number of people and be reasonably assured of the results. But more often, you're selling to several different people at once, and you must adjust your product's presentation to appeal to each of these differentiated markets.

Many times, entrepreneurs have trouble understanding that the exact same product has different appeals, depending on the type of customer you are selling to. Small advertising agencies and freelance writers often get instructions when creating a brochure to make it speak to two audiences, such as to both doctor and patient, when promoting a given medical device. Though both doctor and patient are looking for the same final result, their perspectives are unique. You must appeal to them differently, using different language.

What is a business coach, anyway?

2009-12-08T11:25:00.004+08:00

Six Tips On Hiring A Business Coach
Steven Berglas, Ph.D.,

What is a business coach, anyway?

I get that question all the time, and honestly, the answer is pretty squishy. In today's "helper" economy (as Warren Buffet snidely coined it), a coach can play the role of consultant, shrink, drill instructor, sounding board--whatever "help" managers, executives and entrepreneurs need to boost their performance, or just get through the night.

There are no easily comparable data sets. There is no coaching regulatory body. Like I said: squishy. So how to tell if a coach is right for you?
Start with what, specifically, you think you need. If you want to improve your overall executive comportment, focus on someone who specializes in that. (Marshall Goldsmith has written extensively on the topic.) Need help with public speaking? Check out Nick Morgan, author of Working the Room. There are coaches for everything--the key is knowing how to cut wheat from chaff.

Here are six points to remember:

Coaches aren't paid to make people feel good. No golfer pays $100 an hour for a swing coach to shout bravo as he bangs balls on a driving range. Legitimate coaches offer incisive critiques and useful techniques to improve your game. If your coach lauds more than prods, her goal is to turn you into an annuity, not lower your handicap.

Coaches respect boundaries between the professional and personal realms. It's easy for you and your coach to develop intense positive feelings about each other, especially if the coach has proven truly effective. Some coaches may begin to see you as a friend first, and an employer second. This dilutes the coaching. Avoid that devolution.

Coaches are not intermediaries. I have spent many years helping leaders of corporations, law firms and start-ups learn to modulate their anger and communicate displeasure. I do not, however, act as a go-between when things get sticky. That's not the help these folks need, and in fact, acting as an intermediary only exacerbates the problem. If your coach offers to step into the breach on your behalf, show her the door.

Good coaches never gossip. There is enormous temptation for the coach of a powerful executive to say, "Look, when the Big Guy and I were talking the other day ..." Coaches that succumb to gossip are too insecure to be effective (and that's being charitable). If they open their mouths, close yours and walk away.

Beware the up-sell. Just because your coach has helped you become a captivating public speaker doesn't mean he knows a whit about management technique. If a coach looks to sell you additional services that are clearly beyond his bailiwick, and many do, politely take a pass.

Coaches are not life-directors. If you remember nothing else about hiring a coach, let it be this: Effective coaches do not hand down wisdom from on high. The best ones offer encouragement, observation and ideas, and let their clients make their own decisions. If you hear a coach say, "You should do this," one thing is certain: He or she doesn't have a clue.

Dr. Steven Berglas spent 25 years on the faculty of Harvard Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry. Today he coaches entrepreneurs, executives and other high-achievers. Direct questions or comments to: drb@berglas.com.

How To Make The Work Lunch A Smashing Success

2009-12-08T11:21:00.004+08:00

How To Make The Work Lunch A Smashing Success
Samantha Ettus

The work lunch is a social situation that's ripe with potential pitfalls, from stilted conversation to less-than-tasteful table manners. Plus, you've got business to cover, right?

In this setting, it's best to ignore your companion's etiquette (or lack thereof) and focus on your own, making sure it projects an impeccable reflection of your personal brand.

Here are five steps to transform your power lunch from awkward to awesome with grace, tact and tenacity.

1) Reach Out the Right Way
Settle on a date and immediately offer up a location. Don't take a back seat and offer a meek "Where do you want to go?" or "Whatever you want is fine." Such a lame deflection of a seemingly meaningless decision is in fact the equivalent of a wet noodle handshake. Instead, offer three diverse restaurant options that are geographically convenient for both of you--a great sushi place, a hotel lunch spot and a lower-priced, more casual option. It is helpful to have a roster of places that you go to regularly, know well and can suggest without advance warning.
Starting strong will take the pressure off you and ensure that your companion looks forward to the lunch with anticipation rather than dread.

2) Set the Agenda
Map out your business agenda ahead of time.
If this is a first meeting, Google ( GOOG - news - people ) your guest to obtain important background information that will allow you to initiate engaging conversation and help you avoid any potential pitfalls. If you learn your companion lived in Hong Kong, ask if they have spent any time overseas. Likewise, skip talk of kids with a single person. With just a small effort, you can prevent any awkward silences and foster an easy, flowing conversation, which will help get your meeting off on the right foot.

3) Time Your Arrival
Arrive five to 10 minutes early, be seated first and you will already be in the driver's seat. If you rush in five minutes late you are more likely to be out of sorts and waste the first few minutes of lunch just catching your breath. Order a drink, settle in and mentally review your agenda--in business there is no shame in having one.

4) Choreograph the Main Event
This is a lunch meeting, not a conference call, which means the situation necessitates a personal and positive connection. Start with small talk and save the business until the food arrives. Rely on your research to get things going but be discreet and avoid specifics--if you know too much and reference your guest's kids by name, for example, you might come off looking like a stalker. Stick to topics that are easy and conversational--children, travel, tech. Avoid politics, religion and dating.

Once the food arrives, transition to business talk. You planned your agenda ahead of time, so take the lead and begin with the first item. Make sure to listen as much as you talk. If your primary goal is to network (as opposed to something more actionable), ask many questions and find an area in which you could be helpful to your companion. The right networking relationship is as much about give as take.

5) Know When to Close
This is the time to follow through on your agenda. If the conversation has gone off course, it's your final opportunity to bring it back. Remember that a business lunch does not require complete subtlety. It is perfectly acceptable to return to your agenda stating clearly: "I was hoping to get your thoughts on ABC project" or "I wanted to see if you could join me in my effort to XYZ."

Finally, if your lunch date is not checking their watch and they seem amenable, it is nice to close with coffee or tea. But be sure to ask for the check at the same time so you don't drag out the finale. Like any good date, you want to leave them wanting more.

Samantha Ettus is a personal branding expert, the host of Obsessed TV and the author of the best-selling Experts' Guide series of books. Follow her on Twitter @samanthaettus.

Why Serve a Niche Market?

2009-12-08T00:14:00.000+08:00

Why Serve a Niche Market?
A jack-of-all-trades is a master of none.
By Afarin Bellisario

Entrepreneurs who see a direct correlation between the size of a target market and the probability of success miss the opportunity to serve healthy niche markets. Niche marketing not only provides startups with an opportunity to launch the business successfully, but can also help them grow into major players in a larger market. Healthy, profitable businesses such as Traulsen, Aman Resorts, Zamboni and Peet's Coffee and Tea all serve thriving niches.

Niche players share a common set of traits. These include a deep understanding of their customers and their customers' needs and the ability to stay engaged with those customers. Ideal niche market companies should consistently produce quality, innovative products and possess a genuine regard for the well-being of their employees. Serving a niche allows companies to focus on meeting the needs of a smaller group of customers without compromising their chance to increase the appeal to a broader market.

Look at some successful niche players--some that have gone on to become household names--to see how they achieved, and continue to achieve, success.

A Specific Interest

The iron is one of the oldest and most common household items. It's a commodity product that generally retails for less than $30. That makes the prospect of successfully selling irons priced from $900 to $2,500 farfetched, if not outright ridiculous. Nevertheless, that's exactly what Laurastar has done since 1980, selling more than 2 million really high-end irons to households in 40 countries. Switzerland-based Laurastar serves a seemingly small market niche of people who share one interest--pressing their clothing professionally at home. While forgoing a large market in favor of smaller one may not sound logical to venture capitalists, Laurastar has proved that serving a smaller subsegment of the market with special needs can be profitable and sustainable.

In some cases, niche players concentrate on serving a combination of subsegments of a market with similar interests or lifestyles. Aman Resorts doesn't target just sophisticated, wealthier travelers. Aman Resorts' niche market has a lust for faraway places, an interest in cultural authenticity and a desire for environmental friendliness. The company, which operates properties in Asia, Europe and U.S., has done away with the over-the-top pretentions associated with other luxury brands (think marble reception areas) in favor of small, distinct establishments. Each property is designed to be in harmony with its surroundings and the prevailing local architecture.

Similarly, Peet's Coffee prides itself on serving coffee devotees, or "Peetnicks," people who appreciate great-tasting coffee or tea from many places around the world. The company emphasizes smaller batches, freshness, superior beans and a darker roasting style that produces coffees with greater richness and complexity.
Facing Competition?--Innovate

Niche businesses are not immune to competition, especially from larger market players with substantial resources and economies of scale. So in the face of competition, how should you respond? Successful niche businesses will respond with innovation and higher-quality products, rather than cost-cutting measures.
When larger competitors threatened Laurastar, the company responded by hiring a team of high-caliber engineers to create the world’s smartest iron. The new home pressing system is lighter, easy to handle and features sensors which produce steam automatically with a slight movement of the wrist as the iron is pushed forward; it stops immediately when the iron is halted or moved backward--eliminating the need to press a button to activate the steam. An active board and blower systems also assist with pressing the garment as soon as the iron moves. The combination reduces ironing time by half and saves energy.

Take Care of Employees

Another common trait of successful niche businesses is good human resource policies and labor relations. These companies have realized that offering superior service and products requires hiring, training and retaining superior employees. Niche businesses normally pay higher wages than the industry average and offer generous benefits. Most also enjoy much higher retention rates than their industries average.
A substantial group of niche businesses are family-oriented or family-run. For example, many of the employees at Traulsen and Zamboni are from second and third-generation families.

Peet's uses an operating strategy common among niche players--it does not franchise. The corporation operates all of its stores, this isn't just for quality control, it's to maintain high employee standards. The company offers extensive employee training, a health care plan and other benefits even to part-time workers. Aman Resorts publically attributes its success to its staff; everyone from cleaners to cooks and bus boys.

Growth Options

Once the niche market is saturated, opportunities for growth can come from a number of sources. One option is global expansion. After reaching 25 percent penetration in Swiss markets, Laurastar decided its next level of growth would come from selling abroad. Some niche businesses, such as Patagonia, grow naturally as their offerings and brand appeal to larger markets. Patagonia was originally established to outfit serious outdoor enthusiasts, but today its products have a large following among hip urban youths.

Some venture capitalists are reluctant to invest in niche businesses; this makes it difficult for entrepreneurs to fund their growth through that avenue, so growth sometimes comes from partnerships with larger firms. A by-product of this is many niche-market companies are eventually acquired by those larger companies. Traulsen, for example, was acquired by Illinois Tool Works after merging with Hobart, another food preparation equipment vendor. Sometimes the new corporate governance doesn't work. Take Nantucket Nectar; first it was sold to Ocean Spray and then to Cadbury Schweppes, only to be sold back to its founders.

The bottom line is that despite some difficulties--securing funding and managing growth-- many entrepreneurs who are focused on niche markets find it incredibly profitable and fulfilling. The keys to success are to stay in touch with your customers, understand their needs and keep a laser-sharp focus on serving those needs with a commitment to continuous innovation.

Dr. Bellisario is the founder and principal of TranStrategy, a Boston-based consulting firm that specializes in the commercialization of technology. She's a mentor with MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service as well as a catalyst for the Deshpande Center at MIT. Dr. Bellisario can be reached at afarin@transtrategy.com.

Market With Meaning

2009-12-08T00:11:00.002+08:00

Market With Meaning
By Rosalind Resnick

When Rob Kaufelt bought Murrays Cheese in 1991, the Greenwich Village cheese shop was a mom-and-pop hole-in-the-wall known mostly to the locals.

Today, Murrays Cheese is a thriving emporium that not only sells gourmet cheeses and meats but offers everything from hands-on classes and online tutorials to catering, a cheese cave and freshly made grilled cheese sandwiches. With eye-popping sales of $2,500 per square foot, Murrays has grown by 15 percent to 20 percent a year at its Bleecker Street store, added two locations in New Yorks bustling Grand Central Terminal and just inked a deal with a national chain to open mini-stores in supermarkets across the country.

Murrays has also become a well-known tourist destination where visitors from around the world can come to get a taste of what New York City is all about. The store was named New Yorks Best Cheese Shop by The Village Voice and has been featured on MSN Money and Today, as well as in The New York Times and Martha Stewart Living.

So just how much did it cost Kaufelt to turn his mom-and-pop cheese shop into a national brand?

"Our advertising budget has been zero point zero zero since the day I bought the company," says Kaufelt, who grew up in his familys supermarket business in New Jersey. "Its like my grandfather always said, 'Here,taste!'"

Adding Value

Like Murrays Cheese, companies of all kinds--from retailers to restaurants--are discovering that it's no longer enough to blast out marketing pitches touting the virtues of your company's products and services. You need to create a marketing campaign that entertains, educates and adds value to your customers' lives.

Whether that means doling out mouthwatering samples from behind the counter, creating interactive games to play on the web or offering online courses that teach people how to make their own pasta, todays marketers need to deliver more than slick sales pitches and rock-bottom prices--or risk getting left in the dust.

"Do you know what makes people say 'wow'?" asks marketing guru Seth Godin, author ofPurple Cow, the best-selling book about how companies can transform themselves by becoming remarkable. "Connection, meaning, humanity, things that change them in some way. No one is impressed by your features or even your price. What we talk about is art, generosity, and products and services that make a difference."

Sounds like a pretty tall order--especially for a startup or small business. Funny videos and interactive games may be great marketing tools for Fortune 1000 companies with seven-figure advertising budgets, but how can SMB owners create the same kind of impact as Nike and Burger King?

"Actually, one of the greatest viral videos of all time was created by a small business," says Bob Gilbreath, author of The Next Evolution in Marketing: Connect with Your Customers by Marketing With Meaning and Chief Marketing Strategist atBridge Worldwide, one of the nation's largest digital advertising agencies and part of WPP.

According to Gilbreath, Blendtec was a little-known, 186-employee player in the high-end home blender category until its new marketing director, George Wright, walked past the company lab and saw piles of sawdust on the floor. Once Wright discovered that the R&D manager regularly tested blenders with lumber, he decided to share his discovery with the world. The first of what would become a series of videos called Will it Blend? was shot and posted on YouTube for $50. "That first video received 6 million views in its first week," Gilbreath says, "and Blendtec went on to see sales rise 43 percent over the next year."

How can your business achieve similar results? In his book, Gilbreath proposes a Hierarchy of Meaningful Marketing that consists of the following three levels (loosely based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs):

1. Solution marketing: Free offers, cash savings and loyalty rewards that offer customers real solutions to their problems. "A free sample is a no-cost way for customers to experience your product or service," Gilbreath says. "'Free' tends to make people feel compelled to like your product, and usually the cost is very low."

2. Connection marketing: Online videos, interactive games and social networking that connect customers with the brand. "Entrepreneurs already know their customers well and have a right to earn a place on their 'friend' lists," Gilbreath says. Examples: One deli announces the daily specials to office workers at 11 a.m. when they are beginning to think about where to go, while a pet boarding service uses Facebook to share updates and pictures with pet owners while they are away.

3. Achievement marketing: Online courses, free seminars and cause-related marketing that let customers actualize their potential as human beings. "When done in a way that clearly links to your business and is something your customers care about, cause marketing can significantly drive your sales," Gilbreath says. "For example, Amy Adam, a real estate agent in Cincinnati, donates a percentage of her house closing fees to the charity of her customers' choice." Much of her new business is attributable to her campaign. Besides strong post-sale satisfaction levels, "She's [gotten] specific comments from customers who like the idea and have never heard of something like it before," he says.

Proof is In the Results

Whats the ROI for marketing with meaning? Ask Tara-Nicholle Nelson, an Oakland, Calif., real estate broker and founder and Chief Visionary of {RE}Think Real Estate. Nelson projects the $75,000 she invested in positioning herself as an expert--empowering women to buy their own homes--to yield $1 million in brokerage commissions, speaking engagements, content licensing deals and other revenue by 2010.

Her marketing campaign included a targeted book, website and PR efforts coordinated to position Nelson as the Dear Abby of women-owned real estate--helping female homebuyers overcome their fears and find solutions to their real estate problems. "I can track about $250,000 in revenues directly back to the book and the original campaign," Nelson says. "The fact that no commission or compensation [is] riding on my answer is a major credibility point."

B2Bmarketers can use marketing with meaning to jumpstart their sales efforts, too. Elyissia Wassung, CEO of 2 Chicks With Chocolate in Matawan, N.J., has made sampling the centerpiece of her sales pitch to corporate clients. By letting customers taste, "they get a clearer understanding of the actual product itself," Wassung says. "Textures, flavors, the experience of it dissolving in their mouths--it changes their participation level completely. Suddenly, they're personally involved and asking questions whereas before it was more of a polite response."

Thats why, when it comes to marketing to todays customers, its not enough to win a share of their wallet. Youve got to win their hearts, minds and, sometimes, their taste buds, too.

Says Kaufelt of Murrays Cheese: "When you walk into our store, we want you to walk out with an experience whether you buy something or not."

How to Answer the Toughest Sales Question

2009-12-08T00:09:00.001+08:00

How to Answer the Toughest Sales Question
By Charles H. Green

It was a moment most salespeople could appreciate. On April 13, 2004, President George W. Bush held a press conference at which he was asked, "What would you say your biggest mistakes have been and what have you learned from them?"
The question left the President a bit tongue-tied and he finally left the question up to historians to decide.

I'm confident Bush knew the features and benefits, so to speak, of his presidency by rote. He likely had answers for a wide variety of specific questions that could be asked. But when faced with a large, open-ended question, he froze. A seemingly simple question became the toughest.

If I asked, "Which sales question would you say is the toughest one to answer?" Different people may have different candidates, but I suspect we'd all rate this one pretty high: "Why should we buy from you?"

It is this large, open-ended query that generally produces a poor answer.
Most of us end up fumbling through some rehashed version of our elevator speech, or website, or brochure. Those answers often end up sounding hollow and canned.
And no wonder! The question itself is a setup. The customer doesn't always mean it as a setup--but it is nonetheless.

Here's why. The question almost certainly demands an answer based on you--your services, your product, your business. But any answer that's all about you is simply not going to fly. People buy for their own particular reasons--not yours.

And yet, you probably can't give a customer-based answer either. This isn't a question that comes up after a long relationship, this is a question for the courtship, and at that stage the truth is you honestly don't know enough about the customer to give a credible answer.

So there you are, set up like a bowling pin; precluded from giving a good answer, just waiting to get knocked down. Is there no hope?

Yes, there is hope, and it's very simple. Tell the truth.

The truth is, only a deeply customer-based answer is going to work, and you don't know the customer well enough to know what that answer is. So that question needs reframing. Here's what it might sound like.

Customer: So, tell us this. Why should we buy from you?

You: Honestly, it would be arrogant of me at this point to say why you should buy from us. I'm not even sure you should buy from us, much less why.

What I can tell you right now is why certain people buy from us, and why certain people don't buy from us. I can also give you an idea of why others buy from our competitors, and why some don't.

That's not bluster. Some customers put a great deal of emphasis on flexibility, others value clarity of contracts. I don't know which you value more. And that's just one small component; I'd be happy to list the issues we need to talk about in order to learn who you should buy from.

Nobody is better than everyone else across every single dimension--including us. So it's critical we talk about your various needs to determine who your best supplier is. If we sit down and talk honestly about what's important to you, together we'll learn whether my company is your the best supplier.

So let's get to work. Let's start working to figure out who you should buy from.
Some salespeople will applaud this example and some may deride the answer. But clients will find the thorough and honest examination refreshing.

Charles H. Green is the founder of Trusted Advisor Associates and a speaker and executive educator on the role of trust in professional services. He's taught executive education programs at Kellogg and Columbia Business Schools. Author of Trust-Based Selling, and co-author of The Trusted Advisor, Charles has written for the Harvard Business Review, American Lawyer and the CPA Journal. He blogs at http://www.trustedadvisor.com/blog.

Get to Know Your Competition

2009-12-08T00:05:00.003+08:00

Get to Know Your Competition
By JK Harris

Business is war and the competition is the enemy--right? Wrong. Though competition is a fundamental aspect of being in business, savvy entrepreneurs know that viewing competitors exclusively as adversaries is shortsighted and potentially damaging. A better strategy is to build alliances with your competitors and let them help you become better and stronger. Here's how:

Know who your competitors are. This sounds basic, but it's a mistake many business owners and salespeople make. If you have a retail store, your competitors are obviously other retailers who sell similar merchandise (both online and brick-and-mortar). But that's not all. You're also competing with the businesses that are meeting the needs of your customers with products and services you don't offer and haven't thought about offering, and the businesses that might make your products obsolete. You need to know who all your competitors are--not just the obvious ones, but the ones flying under the radar as well.

Find out everything you can about the competition. Don't get blindsided; pay attention to anything your competitors do. Set up intelligence files for each competitor. Look for articles about them in trade journals, newspapers and magazines. Study their websites. Use programs likeGoogle Alertsto track what's said about them online. If possible and practical, shop them secretly on a regular basis to observe their operations firsthand.

Develop relationships with your competitors. Once you've researched your competitors, reach out to them. Join industry and business networking associations so and get to know the people who own and work for competing companies as individuals. You never know where those relationships might lead.

Be prepared to cooperate and collaborate when necessary. If something is going to have a strongly positive or negative impact on your industry, reach out to your competitors so you can join forces and take appropriate action. For example, you may want to unite to oppose or endorse pending legislation that could affect your companies.

Depending on your particular business, you may also find that competitors can serve as backup resources. For example, you might get an order that's too big for you to fill alone. If you have excellent, reciprocal relationships in place, you might be able to outsource part of the work to a competitor. Or if a competitor suffers a disaster of some sort that prevents that company from serving its customers, you can step in and help out. Not only is that good business; it's also the right thing to do.

Let your competitors make you better. When a competitor is beating you, do your best to figure out why--but don't use that as an excuse to accept defeat. Once you understand what your rival is doing that the market prefers, figure out what you could change to make you even more attractive than the competition. Don't simply copy everything your competitors do; take their best ideas, test them for effectiveness and improve on them.

Resist the urge to compete on price. It's tempting to cut prices to gain market share, but it's a strategy that doesn't work in the long run. There will always be a cheaper product, trying to undercut every competitor is a race to the bottom. Instead, focus on providing greater value.

• If you're not convinced holding firm on price is the way to goconsider the arguments of "Get Past the 'Budget' Roadblock."

Be prepared for the competition to play dirty. Fair competition is great; It forces everyone to give it his or her best. But all competitors don't play fair. There are always people who think that the best way to build their company up is by tearing others down or cheating in some way. When that happens, a fitting action in response is necessary. Don't delay legal action if it's appropriate.

The internet is a common place to find competitors pulling dirty tricks. Monitor what's said about you online and have a proactive online reputation-management plan in place in case you become the target of an internet attack.

• Keep your brand and reputation under control with,"Are you Losing Control of Your Brand Online?"

Competition is a natural part of being in business in a capitalist economy. You must be vigilant if you are to maintain and grow your market share, so let that work to your advantage. Your best competitive tactic comes from Sun Tzu, a Chinese general and military strategist from around 400 B.C. Tzu said, "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer"--and if you happen to turn an enemy into a friend, all the better.

JK Harris is the founder of Flashpoints Consulting, LLC and ofJK Harris & Company, the nation's largest tax resolution firm. He's the author ofFlashpoint: Seven Core Strategies for Rapid-Fire Business Growth, available April 2010 fromEntrepreneur Press. Harris is a popular speakerand a successful business consultant advising mid to large-sized businesses around the world. For a free subscription to Flashpoints newsletter, plus a free copy of JK Harris' e-book, The Mindset of High Achievers, visittheflashpoints.com.

Flip 'I Hate' to 'I Love' to Sell

2009-12-08T00:03:00.001+08:00

Flip 'I Hate' to 'I Love' to Sell
5 tips for sales professionals who want to love their job.
By Barry Farber

It would be great to wake up every day full of enthusiasm about moving your business forward through the sales process. But there are days when we get tired of sales calls to new prospects and feel as if what we used to love has morphed into a feeling of "I hate to sell." No need to worry; it's normal. And there's not a top sales producer I know that hasn't gotten into a rut once in a while. You just have to figure out how to get out of it.

Here are some ways to turn your "I hate selling" days around:

1. Show up. Activity that introduces you to new contacts not only can open up more opportunities for business but also give you that boost of energy that accompanies adding qualified prospects to your pipeline. How many times have you been on your way to a sales meeting or networking event thinking to yourself "this is a waste of my time," only to meet a person who brought you significant business several months later?

2. It's not about you. If you think selling has to do with how well you can talk, then you're missing out on a huge part of your business. After you show up, shut up--doing so might help you love selling. Every time you're with prospects or customers and they start asking questions about you, answer quickly and then turn it around with questions to get them talking about themselves. Since so many people love talking about themselves, you're in no danger of listening yourself out of a sale. Nobody's ever said, "I don't like her; she listens to me too much!"

3. Attitude is king. Maybe you've heard over and over that attitude is everything. Well, there's a reason for that. When you have a negative attitude people pick up on that, and it's contagious. Every day you wake up, your attitude that day has more to do with your sales success than any other factor. Let this knowledge influence your choices: Read positive materials and surround yourself with people who drive you and inspire you. A study of top executives determined the four attributes that contributed to their success were knowledge, experience, intelligence and attitude. When the executives were asked to rank them by importance, knowledge, experience, and intelligence together only comprised 7 percent, while attitude determined 93 percent of their success.

4. Plant seeds in the right soil. One of the biggest factors that contributes to your attitude about selling is rejection. The more rejection we experience, the more we feel like what we're selling is of little value or worth. Many times rejection has more to do with whom you're calling on to make a sale. When the person isn't qualified to make the decision or doesn't have a real need for your services, you have to learn to walk away and move on to more worthwhile accounts. Imagine planting seeds in the desert--it can be very frustrating. If you employ the advice from tip No. 2 above, "It's not about you," you'll know the person you're speaking to and can target questions to determine where your product could be of service.

5. Hard work. This is one of the best ways to beat the salesman blues. It makes up for our deficiencies. Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard.
When I was a kid, my friends and I used to dress up for Halloween and go around town with a pillowcase to fill with treats. There was something satisfying about having that pillowcase filled and going back home for another one. Not only was the payoff sweet, but with all that walking we started to learn which homes, streets and sections of town gave out the best treats. So the next year we were working smarter. Massive activity has a way of qualifying situations you would not have known about otherwise.

Nobody said selling was easy, but when you love what you do it gets significantly easier.

Close With Confidence

2009-12-08T00:01:00.000+08:00

Close With Confidence
3 ways to boost your courage under pressure
By Barry Farber

Under certain circumstances tremendous pressure is put on salesmen to close business and our confidence can deteriorate for many reasons. Losing your top clients to your competitors to a lower price--or better product--or just not believing in what you're selling anymore. Many people think stronger closing skills can make the difference.

Closing has always been one of the top requests as a topic for training. But a weak close is not always the reason salespeople are not selling. One big reason, based on thousands of sales managers’ feedback, is lack of new sales activity.

Here’s why low new sales activity affects your confidence to close. When you have lots of activity in your pipeline and deals are being worked all over the place you have a bit more confidence to walk away from the bad ones--or the ones that waste your time--and stand your ground on the qualified ones. Basically, you've built a foundation of activity to leverage future sales.

When your sales activity is depleted all your current deals become more and more critical to close...and the customer knows that. Many times they see it in the weak approach you make when trying to close their business without a strong reason. Here are several ways to close with courage--the end result will be better for both you and the customer:

1. When you ask for the order, refrain from those "Ben Franklin, 4 corner" closes or any other corny manipulative techniques that you might have heard. You won’t succeed by tricking the customer into buying. The real reason someone is going to buy from you is you've built the relationship through understanding their key needs and found a way to add value to their current situation.

It should be as easy as; "Sure, why don't we go ahead with this?" Or, if you've really done your job upfront by qualifying and presenting a strong solution, the customer might say; "Let’s go ahead with this order."

2. Look at objections as opportunities to provide additional information and not obstacles. Sometimes you will get a "no;" that’s a chance for you to explore deeper and maybe find out what you might have missed during the sales process. Every time I got a "no" while marketing I would always ask my prospects why and what they would do differently if they were in my shoes. You might be amazed at the feedback you get and how that information sometimes gives you the ammunition to turn the sale around.

3. Strengthen your confidence every day. This is done by practice, continuous learning, reading, surrounding yourself with successful people, massive activity and the lessons you get from every experience. Put the wisdom from these experiences into your next approach.

It seems to always come back to "confidence" as the key factor that gives you the courage to close and the ability to never stop believing in the value that you bring to the table.

2009-12-07T23:58:00.001+08:00

5 Steps to Happy Clients
Stay on top of the skills your customers value most.
By Barry Farber | December 02, 2009

Every week I spend at least five hours on the phone interviewing my client's customers. Most of this research is intended to help my clients understand their customer base and increase customer satisfaction and drive sales. There are tremendous benefits to this research that go beyond helping my customers serve theirs better. Their advice contains valuable recommendations that anyone can use to stay more customer focused. Here are five ways you can stay on top of the sales skills customers value most:

1. Be Proactive
When I ask my clients customers about the most important assets a salesperson can have, they often mention a proactive approach. This applies to any area of the salesperson's company that serves the customer; from the customer service department to billing.

When things go wrong it becomes the ultimate opportunity to show them that what you promised in the first place is what they will get. You build trust is more easily when a problem is solved fast rather than if there are never any problems at all. And trust isn't just built by responding to problems, it could just be a question that needs to be answered. Each customer wants to feel like they are the most important person on your list.

2. Communicate
Whether it's before the sale, during the sale or long after the sale, communication is the glue that keeps the relationship together. Facilitate communication through statements like, "Let me see if I understand what you're saying," or, "Just to make sure we're on the right track, are these the three issues you're concerned about?"
Good communication happens when people really listen. It's also a good idea to ask your customer how they would like to be contacted after the sale and how often. Twice a week? Once a month? Every customer is different. One question I always ask when interviewing is, "Is there anything the company or salesperson is not doing that they could be doing to serve you better?" This question always collects valuable information from the customer that can keep you that account and ensure the small problems don't turn into big ones.

3. Have a Positive Attitude
This might sound like a no-brainer, but you wouldn't believe how many times I've heard customers go on and on about how important a friendly and upbeat attitude is with salespeople or anyone working at their company. Very often, I've heard comments like, "John comes into our office and always leaves us in a better mood. He seems to know everyone who works in our department." Great salespeople seem to spread their positive attitude around. You never know who has hidden influence in the decision process or who might be promoted in the future.

4. Understand the Clients' Business
If you're not doing do this, then you might as well send a product and price sheet in the mail and hope for the best. Great salespeople are able to get a handle on customers' needs focusing on them way before the product is presented. Good salespeople seem to have a passion for asking pointed questions and really discovering what makes customers and their businesses so unique. Then the focus becomes how their product or service will address the unique needs of the customer.

5. Follow Up
Nothing magic about this one; just follow up with your customers the day after you deliver your product or solve a problem. Whether you contact your customers through e-mail or snail mail, offer something you think they might enjoy, and offer information that would be useful to them. When you consistently follow up after a sale, you show customers that you're there for them even when they're not buying.
If you're thinking these points are just common sense, you're right. Very often, the things that customers say work the best are the things salespeople lose sight of or take for granted.

Barry Farber is rated as one of the top speakers of the year by Successful Meetings Magazine and is the bestselling author of 11 books on sales, management and personal achievement. He is also a black-belt weapons expert and a regular on QVC as the marketer and co-inventor of innovative products. Contact him at barry@barryfarber.com.

So, You're Going Into Business For Yourself?

2009-12-07T23:56:00.000+08:00

Business Building - Starting a New Business Five Essential Questions You Must Ask First

So, You're Going Into Business For Yourself?

Here's a checklist of five essential questions you must ask
yourself first, and why you need to answer them...

1. What proof is there that there is a market for what I'm
planning to do?

2. How is what I'm doing different to what's already being
done?

3. Why should my prospective customers buy from me instead of
those already supplying the market?

4. Can I establish myself without offering discounts or
"freebies"?

5. How much am I willing to spend to buy customers?

Here's why you need to answer them...

1. Way too often, businesses are established on a whim
without appropriate research. They're started because the
owner had a falling out with their boss, or because a
well-meaning friend suggested their idea was viable. All too
frequently, it's because someone says, "That's a great idea,
everyone needs one of those..."

So the business starts and suddenly the owner realises it's
an uphill battle simply because their pockets aren't deep
enough to education the marketplace.

Solution: Do your research first.

2. Don't bother starting up doing exactly what everyone else
is doing. When there is more than one person doing exactly
the same thing, one of them will ultimately become
redundant.

Solution: Make sure you take a different slant.

3. Just being different isn't enough - you need to be better.

Solution: Your offer, your level of support, your guarantee;
whatever it is needs to differentiate you and make you the
obvious choice.

4. Discounts and freebies are all very well but unless you're
making a profit, or unless the jobs will lead to repeat,
profitable business or valuable testimonials, you're better
off without the work.

Solution: Either charge sustainable fees from the beginning
or understand that you'll be living off your savings for
longer than your family expected!

5. Word of mouth and networking on their own aren't a
marketing plan.

Solution: Invest in direct response marketing (see some of my
other articles on this site) and measure your results.
Allocate funds to marketing and see your ads as an investment
in buying customers. Monitor this investment as you would
shares or property. Always remember that a bad is always
going to be a bad ad. If the phone doesn't ring, change it!

Good luck with your new business!

10 Reasons Your Marketing Messages Stink

2009-12-07T11:36:00.007+08:00

10 Reasons Your Marketing Messages Stink - Yahoo! Finance

10 Reasons Your Marketing Messages Stink
By Susan Gunelius
On 3:00 pm EST, Tuesday November 24, 2009

You could write the most eloquent copy in the world, but even the best writing doesn't always drive consumer responses. In other words, it takes more than an ability to write coherently to craft compelling, actionable and meaningful marketing copy that delivers a return on investment that small-business owners need.

Just as there are steps you can follow to ensure you write effective copy, there are also reasons why the copy you produce isn't working. There are reasons why your copy stinks, and 10 of those reasons follow:

1.You're arrogant. If your copy is mostly about you, then it won't connect with consumers. Instead, make sure your copy focuses on the target audience. Your role is simple, help the audience in some way. The audience--their needs and their wants--should drive your copy. Show how you can help them instead of writing about why you think you're wonderful.

2.You're pushy. Heavy-handed copy that uses hard sales language is past its time, and your audience is likely to see right through hard sales tactics. If it sounds like an infomercial, the trust level plummets. Consider your audience, your product and your goals before you resort to hard sales messages.

3.You're rambling. Cut to the chase. Consumers are busy: They're bombarded by messages all day, and you don't want your messages to get lost in that racket. Nor do you want your audience to lose interest before you have a chance to get your key messages across to them. Say it succinctly and quickly.

4.You're boring. Creating boring copy is another way to get lost in the daily clatter of messages consumers see and hear. Make your copy motivating and action-oriented. Don't be passive. Instead, actively engage your audience with timely, appropriate and urgent messages.

5.You're not believable. Don't make pie-in-the-sky claims. Nowadays consumers can see right through them and are turned off by them. The keys to success are to be transparent, open and honest. Consumers are looking for messages that are based in truth.

6.You're not saying what people want to hear. Listen to your target audience before you communicate with them. Research your customers and learn what they want to hear from you. Don't just tell them; show them that you understand and you truly can deliver what they want and need. Match your message to your audience.

7.You're marketing in the wrong place. Your marketing investment is useless if your messages aren't seen by your target audience. Do your research and put your messages where your target audience is most likely to see them.

8.You're putting the cart before the horse. Don't just dive in and write copy without doing your homework first. Research your competition and research both current and prospective consumers to get a complete understanding of the marketplace. You need to understand the world around you before you can create messaging related to that world.

9.You're a one trick pony. It's not enough to spread your messages in one medium. Successful businesses must have integrated marketing plans that involve various media--both online and offline--working together seamlessly to create cohesive, persistent and consistent messaging.

10.You're not making sense. Your copy should be written in the language your target audience is most likely to respond to. Remove any jargon and buzzwords that your target audience won't understand and match your style and tone to that audience.
Review your copy and make sure you aren't making any of the steps listed above. Making even one these mistakes is an easy way to render your copy and your entire marketing investment worthless.

Susan Gunelius is president and CEO ofKeySplash Creative Inc., a full service marketing communications provider and branding consultancy, and owner ofWomenOnBusiness.com, a leading blog community for business women. She is the author of severalbooks, includingKick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Stepspublished by Entrepreneur Press. Her newest book,Building Brand Value the Playboy Way, is now available.

How to Build a Social Media Campaign

2009-12-07T11:30:00.002+08:00

How to Build a Social Media Campaign - BusinessWeek

How to Build a Social Media Campaign
Good marketers see the value of developing a presence where their audience already gathers, whether online or at the shopping mall By Hilary JM Topper

Social media is all about sparking conversation, not just online, but offline too. Done well, social media draws us in, delights us, and even offers glimpses of the future. These dynamics overlap into the real world, as people go about their daily business. Companies that understand this and interact with their market at every opportunity—both on the Web and face to face—get the most from their marketing campaigns. And they help to further imprint their brand on the public.

Visit a Simons' Mall, for example, where thirsty shoppers who stop at Coca-Cola's (KO) latest touch-screen vending machines are now in for a surprise. Never mind yesterday's technology, where consumers routinely plunked in coins, punched in numbers, and received a bottle. These new machines showcase video images of bottles that you can spin—virtually—and learn more about the product, including its pricing.

Yes, it's a play on that old-fashioned game, Spin the Bottle. Yet it's also a recurring theme with its smart phone app, "Spin the Coke," prompting fans to post online about how much they enjoy the combination of Coca-Cola and the promise of kisses. In addition, Coke gives consumers a chance to build a community around its most recent beverage offerings.

Deli Directions

Such innovation foreshadows new conveniences on the horizon, making it easy to envision a day in the not-too-distant future when consumers might be able to order a Coke on their smartphone and be directed to the nearest deli where a frosty bottle awaits. Talk about one-on-one interaction with the customer.

Coke gets it. And those who model a marketing platform after Coke's can build a foundation where they can not only engage followers and ride the wave to the next generation of social media. Like all good marketers, these companies see the value of developing a presence where their audience already gathers—whether online or in our streets and shopping malls. And by putting themselves front and center, these companies interact with the public, finding out what people want, inspiring spontaneity—and yes, purchases.

Still, as with traditional marketing, a successful social media program must be mindful of consumers' interests. This mission is easy to accomplish, whether by constantly developing tools that help a company remain relevant to its audience or by conducting some research to garner customers' thoughts about an organization's products and services. The best part?

Businesses don't need deep pockets to incorporate an effective social media platform. But they will need the time to engage their market share online, whether through a Facebook fan page, Twitter, or a host of other popular sites. True, not all of these sites are household names yet. Still, they enjoy solid followings.

Below are some suggestions to help jump-start a successful social media platform.

• Keep it interesting.

Run contests that generate water-cooler talk—whether for a weekend getaway, a dinner out, a new wardrobe, or a gift certificate. For instance, JCPenney, which recently mounted a major effort to build a following on Facebook, is running a contest in which its fans show off their style by posting their photos donning their favorite JCPenney outfit.

• Be consistent.

Are you fun and whimsical online? Maintain that momentum offline as well. Followers will expect that same identity in all of their interactions with your brand. Here, again, Coca-Cola leads the category—playful on the Web and when customers interact face-to-face with its products.

• Comb the Web for free market research.

Don't overlook the importance of staying in tune with your customers. Read what they're saying, whether on Facebook, iTunes, YouTube, or elsewhere. And know when to respond. Maybe they love your product or service—something you may want to build upon, whether through developing new offerings or spearheading a new branding initiative.

Then again, maybe their posts reveal that they are looking for a product or service that you in fact, already offer. If that's the case, let them know as quickly as possible, before they go searching elsewhere. Or maybe they are complaining about a kink in one of your applications; you'll want to let them know you are working on a resolution.

• Stay relevant.

Avoid frequent posts that would not pertain to your base at large. Otherwise fans will lose interest, and worse, begin to consider your status updates as spam. That's a sure way to lose your audience, no matter how great your offerings.

Stick to these steps, and your followers will stay tuned—a surefire sign that your social media campaign is working.

Hilary JM Topper is the author of Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Social Media, but were afraid to ask....

Protect Your Data on a Home Wireless Network

2009-12-07T11:23:00.002+08:00

Protect Your Data on a Home Wireless Network - Yahoo! Finance

Protect Your Data on a Home Wireless Network
By AllBusiness.com
On 8:00 am EST, Friday December 4, 2009

One of the many good things about the Internet is that it enables us to work at home. When you work at home with your company data flowing through your network and computer, however, you need to pay special attention to securing that data.

One of the basic concepts taught in college-level computer security courses is "defense in depth." That means providing more than one level of security surrounding your computers. In the case of a home network, it means defending the wireless access point and also defending individual computers. There are five basic steps to secure your data in a home network. They'll help keep your work data and your personal data secure.

1.Turn on encryption on the wireless router. Encryption is like having your own magic decoder ring. It keeps other people from reading your data. Use Wi-Fi protected access (aka WPA) encryption if you can, but the older, standard wired equivalent privacy (or WEP) is better than nothing by a long shot. The setup is a bit of a pain as you need to copy a key from the wireless router to each computer, but modern wireless routers have made the process much simpler.

2.Turn off the SSID. Each wireless router has a name called the service set identifier. The SSID is like an address that is broadcast to the world by the router. At the cost of having to copy the SSID to each computer, you can turn it off. While a clever hacker can still get the SSID, it makes it less obvious that you have a wireless router. Defense in depth, remember? At the same time, you should change the SSID name from the manufacturer's default. Don't change it to your name or address, change it to some random five-digit number. The last thing you can do is turn down the power. Most wireless routers allow you to decrease the amount of broadcast power you use. Turn it down so it just covers your house.

3.Use a VPN tunnel to talk to work computers. A virtual private network is like a secure tunnel from your computer all the way to your work computers. It's a very safe way to transmit sensitive or confidential data from servers to your computer. Even if you're on an unsecured wireless hotspot at your local coffee shop, you can be secure with a VPN tunnel.

4.Turn on the Windows firewall and have antivirus and malware scanners on all computers. This is more defense in depth. Even if the hackers get through your wireless router and into your network, you can still stop your computer from being turned into a zombie that's used to send out spam. It's estimated that there are more than 18 million home computers in the United States that have been taken over by hacking networks. Keep your security software up-to-date. Save your work computer for work and keep the kids on their own machine.

5.Back up your data. Disasters happen. Computers get infected. Coffee gets spilled. One of the most important things you can do cheaply is backup your data periodically. Remember, you can replace the computer much more easily than you can replace your data.

Putting a little care into the design and implementation of your home wireless network can make your home computing environment much safer for both your company data and your personal data.

How to build great leaders

2009-12-07T11:13:00.003+08:00

How to build great leaders - Nov. 19, 2009

How to build great leaders
To help prepare promising leaders for the future, top companies are forcing their employees to take on new (global) risks.
By Geoff Colvin, senior editor at large
Last Updated: November 20, 2009: 4:05 PM ET

(Fortune magazine) -- For John Tolva, IBM's Chicago-based director of citizenship and technology, the value of his four-week assignment to Ghana last year really hit him during a game of Scrabble by candlelight.

He and teammates from India, Germany, Brazil, and other countries had agreed on an unorthodox rule: You could use any language you knew. "That's when I understood what a globally integrated enterprise looks like," he says.

He and the others were forced to ask "what connects us," since it obviously wasn't language or culture. The real connection, Tolva says, is "the values that IBM has instilled in us. It's a professional code that isn't written down -- but it's there."
The group of 10 was part of IBM's two-year-old Corporate Service Corps (CSC), which sends teams around the world to work with local organizations on local problems.

Tolva's group was helping create a program for promoting Ghanaian handicrafts globally. The job "stretched me in a way we all absolutely need," says Tolva, 37, who has since been promoted to his current executive-level job. "It gave us a shake in perspective." It also means that "there are now nine other people in the company I would trust with my life."

Developmental assignments like his are among the most important tools that great companies use to build leaders -- and that average companies rarely use at all.
The importance of such assignments and how they're being adapted to pay off in today's global economy are two of the strongest messages emerging from the research behind our new ranking of the world's Top Companies for Leaders.

Fortune has joined the human resources consulting firm Hewitt Associates and the HR services firm RBL Group to identify companies around the world that are best at attracting, developing, and keeping business leaders.

The making of Jeff Immelt

It's no coincidence that they turn out to be many of the world's top-performing companies. After years of repeating that "people are our most important asset," managers everywhere are discovering that in an information-based economy, it's actually true.

"Our board of directors spends an entire day on how we're developing our top leaders," says J. Randall MacDonald, HR chief at IBM (IBM, Fortune 500), No. 1 in this year's ranking. Despite working for the company most successful at leadership development -- and spending almost $700 million a year on it -- he knows the race never ends: "My lead over the competition is probably one-half of an inch."

There's no better time than a historic recession to push people outside their comfort zone, yet recessions are precisely when some companies cut back on this valuable tool.

Developmental assignments are an investment, so they incur costs before they pay a return. Pulling someone out of a job where he's performing well imposes a cost, and putting him into a job he hasn't yet learned imposes a further one. The payback -- a strong leader -- may not emerge for years.

Truly believing in these professional challenges requires more courage than you may suspect. Consider what happened at General Electric (GE, Fortune 500) back in 1989, when the company's appliance division discovered it had sold a million refrigerators with faulty compressors.

The refrigerators would have to be returned -- the largest appliance recall of all time. To manage such a crisis, most companies would turn to the most experienced "recall" executive on earth. GE did the opposite.

CEO Jack Welch and HR chief Bill Conaty decided to put a promising 33-year-old manager, future CEO Jeff Immelt, in charge of the situation, though he had zero experience with appliances -- or recalls. Welch and Conaty saw an opportunity to build a leader. And while the experience was hellish, Immelt says, "I wouldn't be CEO today if I hadn't had that job."

The best companies tailor these "stretch" assignments to the future business environment, which is why "global" development has become the major theme among virtually all the companies in this ranking.

Many of them -- including P&G (No. 2 on the list), GE (No. 7), Colgate-Palmolive (COLGATE-PALMOLIVE) (No. 12), and PepsiCo (PEP, Fortune 500) (No. 20) -- get most of their revenue from outside their home country. All realize that global expansion holds their greatest growth opportunities and often their greatest challenges. "International assignments are where we generate the most stretch," says Richard McAnally, an HR executive at Deere (No. 14).

Globetrotting toward greatness

How much stretch? Raj Kalathur is an Indian-born U.S. citizen working for Deere (DE, Fortune 500) in Singapore. It isn't easy. He's in charge of Deere's sales and marketing for most of Asia and Africa, where Deere is little known.

The company dominates the U.S. market for farm equipment with a 50% share, but Kalathur says 60% of potential customers in India -- the world's biggest tractor market -- have never even heard of it. Deere has been stretching Kalathur, 41, since he arrived for a summer job in 1996 while getting his MBA.

"In week one they sent me to Beijing to find out more about the banking industry in China and how we could get working capital financing," he says, still marveling at the experience. "I had no background in China or in banking." Later they put him in charge of logistics at a plant in Mexico -- "I had no background in logistics," he says, not to mention Mexico. Each challenge built him further.

"The next frontier in developmental assignments," says Hewitt principal Robert Gandossy, "is experiences that are more socially responsible." At Brazil's Natura Cosméticos (No. 11), managers might work in a nongovernment organization to help build and organize it. General Mills (No. 3) expects many of its most promising leaders to serve on nonprofit boards.

Modeled on the Peace Corps, IBM's Corporate Service Corps helps develop employee leadership skills, and it builds goodwill for the company in the developing world. It's also wildly popular. About 500 participate each year -- not many in a company of some 400,000 -- and they must submit a laborious application.

IBM says the program is more selective than any Ivy League college. Harvard Business School professor Chris Marquis surveyed participants and found that "virtually all respondents answered that the program increased their interest in staying at IBM."
That's vital because participants are mainly rising leaders who've been with the company seven to 15 years -- exactly the employees that a company is most vulnerable to losing.

Developing a broad program of stretch assignments isn't easy. Many corporate cultures are so addicted to the short term that they couldn't bear putting dollars into a new category of investment that will pay off only later.

But perspective is key. Most of Fortune's Top Companies for Leaders have been around a long time. Those that haven't been, such as Infosys (No. 24), show strong signs of lasting. They all understand that leadership development is a long-term game.
"We can't afford not to do this," says Deere's McAnally. "We're 172 years old. We're not just looking at the next year, but at the next several decades."

First Published: November 19, 2009: 10:06 AM ET

10 Biggest Job Interview Blunders

2009-12-07T11:02:00.003+08:00

10-biggest-job-interview-blunders.html: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance

10 Biggest Job Interview Blunders
by Anne Fisher
Monday, November 30, 2009provided by

In this lousy market, don't be your own worst enemy. Here are the most common mistakes candidates are making -- and how to fix them.

Dear Annie: A few months ago I lost a middle-management job at a company where I worked for 14 years. I received four promotions during that time, but it had been quite a while since I actually interviewed for a new job.
I've gone on several interviews in the past few weeks, which I know I was lucky to get, but they've all been dead-ends. A friend suggests that I hire a coach to help me polish my interviewing skills and figure out what I'm doing wrong. Your thoughts? -Rusty

Dear Rusty: You aren't necessarily doing anything wrong. With unemployment now at 10.2% nationally, and much higher in some states, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates that there are 6.3 job hunters for every available job. That's three times the average that prevails in a healthy economy, the BLS notes, so the numbers may simply be working against you.

That you've gotten several interviews in the past few weeks is a good sign. And it's certainly true that a competent coach could help you improve your interviewing technique.

But before you invest in a coach, see if you're making an easily avoidable mistake you could clear up on your own.

"The competition is tough enough without giving potential employers reasons not to hire you," says Tim Schoonover, chairman of outplacement and leadership-development firm OI Partners.

Here are the most common errors career coaches at OI Partners see -- and how to fix them:

10. Over-Explaining Why You Lost Your Last Job
It's okay to mention that your last position was eliminated, but then move on to what you can do for this employer.

9. Conveying That You're Not Over It
"During interviews, some people are acting wounded, angry or sad," Schoonover says. These are normal emotions after a layoff but they don't belong in a job interview -- or you may "seem unstable and communicate that you don't grasp the business reasons for layoffs," he adds.

8. Lacking Humor, Warmth, or Personality
Many anxious job candidates are "one-dimensional during interviews, and are too focused on getting their talking points across," notes Schoonover. "Don't forget to show qualities that can be a real plus in the decision-making process, including humor in good taste, warmth, and understanding." One thing interviewers want to know, of course, is how pleasant you would be to have around the place every day.

7. Not Showing Enough Interest or Enthusiasm
After all, "companies are looking for people who are excited about working with them," Schoonover says.

6. Inadequate Research About a Potential Employer
It's essential to be up on the latest news, so be sure to Google the company before the interview. Be prepared with well-informed, thoughtful questions about its products or services and its future plans. Many applicants aren't bothering, Schoonover says, and it shows.

5. Concentrating Too Much on What You Want
Focus more on what the interviewer is saying. Listening carefully is crucial in steering the conversation toward how you would fit in and what you have to offer.

4. Trying to Be All Things to All People
"Devote most of your effort to talking about what you know you do well, and don't try to stretch your actual qualifications too far," Schoonover advises. A good rule of thumb: Don't apply for any job unless you have at least 75% of the stated qualifications.

3. "Winging" the Interview
Schoonover hears from many hiring managers that candidates often aren't ready to answer difficult questions. So rehearse. "Prepare and practice a 90-second verbal resume, and some answers to possible questions, so that you come across as succinct," he suggests.

2. Failing to Set Yourself Apart From Other Candidates
"You have to make the strongest possible case for why you are the best person for the job," Schoonover says. "Specifically address what impact you can have on sales, profits, costs, or productivity within the next three to six months. Use quantifiable achievements from past positions to back up your performance promise."
And the No. 1 mistake OI Partners' coaches see job hunters make:

1. Failing to Ask For the Job
"You have a much better chance of getting the job if you ask for it," says Schoonover. "Close the interview by summing up what you can bring to the job, and ask for the opportunity to deliver those results."

Copyrighted, Fortune. All rights reserved

Selling scripts tips

2009-12-04T19:12:00.000+08:00

Selling scripts don't sell, salespeople do. Salespeople who
use selling scripts sell more.

Here are six selling tips you can use when preparing your
selling scripts.

1. First of all, be yourself. It's a lot easier than trying
to be someone else.

2. Turn the call into a conversation with your sales
prospect. Remember - don't read, just talk.

3. Think about saying something your sales prospect has
never heard. For example, "I'm calling to see what we can do
to help you consider our line of (Insert your product/service
here)."

4. Have a 5" X 7" mirror sitting close to the phone to make
sure you're smiling throughout the entire sales call.

5. Periodically you should record your end of the phone
call. Pay attention to your volume, inflection, pacing, and
your tone throughout your sales call.

6. In sales, preparation and practice separate the Willy
Loman's from the Quintessential sales pros.