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. 

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 […]

We are in the process of building out our new Manifast website. This is not the Manifast tool which is already quite mature and powerful, but our marketing website. 

There are so many ways you could do it.

This is our approach.

Communicate the Value First

Seth Godin talks often about telling a story; best story wins. Chet Holmes talks about focusing on a core story with market driven data in "The Ultimate Sales Machine". Bob Burg and John David Mann talk […]

I recently caught some of the speakers at Susan Baroncini-Moe's Guinness World Record attempt at the longest uninterrupted web cast. As of this writing she is allegedly the new record holder.

I happened to win a free copy of a book for being quick on Twitter (live Tweeting quantity). My closest competitor did taunt me mid way through (her mistake). Not that I am competitive.

It just arrived the other day in a standard brown envelope. Upon opening the envelope I saw this:

Susan also […]

12 years ago when we started our company, I thought that branding, marketing and selling were something that someone else would handle. Sure as the president of the company I needed to set direction, but the icky parts were going to be done by someone else and I could focus on the project work for clients; you know, "delegate".

Today I know deep down in my heart that branding, marketing and selling are your business. Building a business means dealing with those subjects head-on. You can delegate the work, but you should not ever delegate the strategy (or the […]

Offering referral fees to others to send business your way is a two edged sword at times:

• On one hand you can really increase your customers,
• On the other hand you might not get the customers you really want or need.

Therein lies the paradox.

On The Positive Side

On the positive side you are offering a financial incentive to others to refer business your way. Your customers and "agents" can earn some cold hard cash sending business your way.

You hope that the person doing the referring is looking out for both your and the potential client's best interest in making the connection.

But There Is […]

As soon as something becomes popular, someone tries to figure out how to make money on it. Nothing wrong with that… that is a free market in action.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. are essentially free for the end user. The companies building and running them can't afford to do so forever without a revenue stream. So free means harvesting the data and selling it in some way, shape or form; and some advertising.

Businesses in general are experimenting with how to interact with customers and potential customers via these platforms. Some have been remarkably successful which is causing […]