Marketing Archives – Page 6 of 13

22 Jul 2013

Underperforming in Sales: Check Your Beliefs

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:26:58-06:00July 22nd, 2013|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership, Marketing, Mindset and Motivation, Sales|

Are your beliefs holding you back in sales?

If you don't believe you can sell until…

You have a killer web site,
You have a flawless script,
You have a gorgeous glossy brochure and beautiful business cards,
You have been trained for countless hours,
You have 10,000 followers on Twitter and 5,000 page likes on Facebook,
Essentially, everything is perfect…

You won't!

Just like anything else you choose to do, it is extremely difficult to exceed your own expectations.

Sales starts with attitude.

If you are the only one selling, your business will die or at the very least, you will starve.

Positive mental attitude sales success […]

11 Jul 2013

Everyone Is In Customer Service – Just Do It!

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:27:28-06:00July 11th, 2013|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Dream Teams, Leadership, Marketing, Sales|

We've all heard it.

"Everyone in your company or organization who interacts with a customer or provides a product or service to a customer is in customer service."

The same is true for marketing. Or branding.

If you extend this to include everyone inside your organization who could impact the reputation of your organization; you pretty much include everyone.

Zappos starts everyone out in their call center. I read that WestJet expects employees and spouses flying for free or on discounts to help clean the plane.
Business person overwhelm help keeping up […]

11 Jun 2013

Using Your Super-Powers for Market Feedback

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:28:04-06:00June 11th, 2013|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership, Marketing, Sales|

I was looking for wording on a new motto for myself the other day. So I asked some people on social media (Twitter) for feedback on:

"If you can't be funny, at least be odd."

After listening to feedback from my friends around the world on Twitter, I changed it to:

"If you can't be funny, at least be different."

Parrot, humor, business, core values

After thinking about it, even the Monty Python crew used to say "and now for something completely different", even […]

7 May 2013

Hats Off To Randy Gage And Mystique

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:29:11-06:00May 7th, 2013|Categories: Books and Courses, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales|

Randy Gage recently announced he is disappearing from public life.

"Effective today, I’ll stop posting to my Facebook page, Twitter feed, YouTube channel and blog, and am going to disappear from the public stage."

I have recently been thinking about Sally Hogshead's book "Fascinate" and how I could apply it to my message.

My primary trigger happens to be Mystique. So the rest of his message was fascinating to read.

Now back to Randy…

Chinese pagoda thinking learning growing success mystique He […]

8 Apr 2013

Forget What You Know: It Is Really All about the Client

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:30:37-06:00April 8th, 2013|Categories: Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales|

What if we take this literally?

After thinking about “Endless Referrals” by Bob Burg a
couple of thoughts popped into my head.

Could I train an effective marketing and sales team
to generate leads and conduct initial sales calls with just a vague sense of
what our products and services do?

Would this be effective at breaking the “it’s all about us”
cycle of client abuse?

I was actually surprised by the answer.

Yes, I could.

And it just might be.
Man putting business card in pocket networking […]

18 Mar 2013

The 3 Sales Books You Need Most

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:31:27-06:00March 18th, 2013|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales|

We recently hired a Sales and Marketing professional so I asked myself, "What are the 3 sales books that influenced me the most in the last year or two?"

So here it is, the three books (well actually it is 5) that will form the core of our initial Sales training program.

The 3 Sales Books You Need Most

The Go-Giver

The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John […]

7 Mar 2013

Start with Value

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:31:54-06:00March 7th, 2013|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales|

There are a number of times in business where you are
tempted to jump to a solution without really considering your customers first.

This is a big mistake.

Setting Your Price

Recently we were trying to figure out where to position
ourselves for pricing of some of our products and services.

The obvious first step is to look at what your direct and
indirect competitors are doing and use that as a baseline. You can then pick
the low, mid or high point and go from there. They must know what they are
doing, right?

Wrong.

Start with Value, Customer First, Business Success […]

19 Dec 2012

Serendipity and Defining the Ideal Customer

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:33:44-06:00December 19th, 2012|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Manifast, Marketing, Sales|

Having the discipline to define and focus on your ideal
customer at the exclusion of all distractions is a skill that eludes many
business owners.

We naturally want to say “everyone” can use our product or
service. After all, what if we exclude someone and they want what we have?

Marketing to “everyone” is very expensive and the message usually
becomes so vague it doesn’t really catch anyone’s attention.

You need a story that resonates to a group of people, your
ideal customer. So you need to be clear who that is.

Defining Our Ideal Customer

We started out with the idea Manifast was for any small […]

3 Oct 2012

Know, Like and “Trust?”

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:35:13-06:00October 3rd, 2012|Categories: Doug's Blog, Go-Giver Coach, Marketing, Sales|

In "The Go Giver", Bob Burg and John David Mann wrote:

"All things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business
to, those people they know, like and trust."

The words equal, know and like could have a lengthy discussion in and of themselves when it comes to the nuances of meaning, business, people and sales.

But I want to zero in on trust.

I recently had a coaching call with the amazing Dixie Gillaspie where she reminded me that trust has a special meaning in business sales. So like most powerful lessons, I think and then write (or talk) […]

20 Aug 2012

Selling Without A Plan – Do You Have One?

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:35:47-06:00August 20th, 2012|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales|

Today I was part of no less than two discussions around closing and why it doesn't always happen. The similarities with my own recent experiences caused me to consider things a little deeper. I've been making these very mistakes at times.

Snoopy
You've got them seeing Snoopy. Now what?

The Big Event

By big event I mean a product demo, major sales call, public speaking, a seminar, a teleseminar, a webinar or any other event where you are bringing people in to feed your sales pipeline.

In many cases you are very focused […]