People hate being sold to. This explains why salespeople understandably find selling to new customers so daunting. It doesn’t have to be if you follow a few guidelines: Be interesting: conversation Cold calling is (mostly) dead. The best way to…
sales
How To See Your Marketing As A Win Instead Of A Waste Of Time
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” John Wanamaker nailed it back in the late 1800s when he summed up just about every small business owners’ feeling toward marketing their…
5 Guaranteed Benefits of Sticking With Your Marketing System
Creating systems for your business is perhaps one of the most important steps you can take to nudge your business toward profitability. As complicated as it sounds, developing systems is just another way of organizing your business operations. By defining…
3 Secrets To Getting Your Customers To Sell For You (Hint: Think Service)
Let’s face it. We need repeat sales to make this thing called business work. Even our best efforts fall short if we fail to get customers to buy the right products, at the right price, at the right time, not just once,…
10 Ways To Use Timely Follow Up To Position Your Small Business To Win
Customers have high expectations. Gone are the days of transactional sales with faceless individuals who breeze in and out of your stores and on and off your websites. Today’s new normal is all about relationship. And one of the best…
3 Simple Reasons Prospects Don’t Buy
When sitting down with decision makers, there is a tremendous amount of pressure on us, the business owner, to sell – to close the deal. So, we take out our gadgets and flip through our brochures, determined to convince them…
Retention Marketing: 3 Tips On How To Keep Nurturing, Post-Sale
Most conversations about “nurturing” today revolve around lead generation and lead scoring. Getting leads “sales ready” is one of the benefits of popular tools like marketing automation software, which aims to, through a series of consistent and meaningful touches (like emails and social…
The Power of Saying NO…
Today, I’m going to give you permission to do something that you’ve probably dreamt of, but never imagined you’d be able to do. There are very few guarantees in life, but if you take advantage of this opportunity, I promise…
Decision Makers Are Still In the Office…So Call Already!
During the holiday season, many of us are looking forward to some downtime. As a small business owner, you may not have the luxury of taking extended time off during the year because you are your business. But, the long hours…
The Initial Meeting….A Time to Listen, Not Talk
I’m a talker. That’s a surprise to some, but not to most. But my daughter, a thriving kindergartener, puts me to shame. As soon as she opens the car door, it starts. Talking 100 words per minute, I know who did what…
Forecasting: More Than A Gut Feeling
Entrepreneurs are a different breed. Not everyone can, is willing, or should go out on a limb and risk so much. Being in business for oneself is hard work but the potential reward, in my opinion, is what draws us in. The ability…