A Clip over the Ears

When we didnt do what we were tolled, we got a "Clip over the ears" It never hurt me and I am a good person now. Sound familiar? I know I have said that in the past about my childhood experencies.

I have since reasoned out that all a child learns from the "Clip over the ears" is, when someone wants something, and has tried everything else. They use violence or the threat of violence, to get what they want. The entire world works on this principal. Every War, every Terroist act  stems from, I want something I have tried everything else, so now I will use violence! We must stop the violence cycle, we must believe that violence is never the answer to get what you want! We must tell everyone starting with our Children, if the only way to get something is with violence then it is not worth it.

Why do most CRM projects fail?

CRM fails because most CRM solutions take the user out of outlook. Sure most programs say "we sync with outlook", but that becomes a problem with in it self. The solution is to manage your pipeline and your customers in outlook. Avidian make a fantastic CRM solution that runs inside of outlook. If you can use outlook you can use Avidian prophet.

The value of a referral

One of my BNI colleagues referred me to their partner to help the partner with a website. The partner referred meto his accountant and the accountant referred me to one of his clients and that client has just referred me to a colleague of his. That is the 5 th amount of work from one referral. Referrals will help you build your business

Death of a Salesman

This morning I read this article by Ruslan Kogan

http://www.startupsmart.com.au/sales-and-marketing/2011-03-14/death-of-the-salesmen.html

Whilst I agree there is no place for the pushy salesperson using outdated methods and trying to "close the sale" I have spent most of my working life in professional IT sales. I know I have helped my customers over the years as they have happily referred me to their networks. I take exception to the general principal that there is something wrong with being a  Salesperson. I am proud to be a Salesperson   I am a Newsell salesperson. The essence of Newsell is you cant close the customer. Please have a look at

http://www.schoolofthinking.org/why/newsell-coaching/

ecommerce

Having a website that allows your customers to purchase your products quickly and easily does not cost thousands's of dollars and take months to build. We have full ecommerce sites up running in as little as 10 days with a moderate investment of $1000.00.
Check out the video

The Power of a referral

I have started working with a new customer and that customer has referred me to one of his clients. The new prospect said "If Sam is using you thats good enough for me" As a small business owner those words are very powerful. A referrals is a guaranteed way to build a substantial business. The best way to get referrals is to join BNI http://www.bnimelbourneeast.com.au/index.asp

Welcome back to an old friend

An old friend has come back into my life. It says a lot about our digital lives when I am referring to software as an old friend. I would like to welcome back Avidian's Prophet back into my life. If your not familiar with Prophet, take the time to get acquainted!. Prophet is a fantastic CRM program that sits inside outlook. It just works and if you need some tech support, their people are excellent.
Have a look at http://www.avidian.com/default.aspx

Return on Investment (R.O.I.)

1.    

A website should either generate money in the form of new sales or save you money by helping you to communicate quicker and cheaper with your existing customers. There are plenty of stories of how companies spent thousands of dollars on a flash new website and the site didn’t add a dollar or save a dollar for the company. If a web designer skips around ROI, then, perhaps you should skip away before you spend any money with him.

I love it when a plan works

I have recently started working with a customer who wants to become known as a 5 Star Hot Water specialist. So we built a site, set some goals in Google analytics and started the process of building his business on line. A few short weeks later his business has started to achieve the goal of new customers via Google.

He is ecstatic at the early results, and so am I.

Your site must be professional

Just because your nephew knows first aid doesn’t mean you should let him perform open heart surgery on you. First impressions count and on the internet you have around 4 seconds to generate that first impression. 

Email Marketing

Having a website with the ability to email your customers is a very powerful tool, in fact an integrated email solution is the cheapest and quickest way to keep in contact with your existing customers. In many cases email marketing is a very expensive add on that a web designer might offer! All Online Knowledge websites include email marketing.

 Online Knowledge Email Marketing

Programmers & Designers

A website can be built with a range of competing technologies. In many cases web designers discuss the technology and the platform they use to build a site. When this happens it makes it very hard for a customer to tell the designer what they want or expect. The customer can end up with a site that doesn’t meet there needs. This could be due to several reasons:

• A great designer who is a bad programmer
• A great programmer who is a bad designer
• A bad designer who is a bad programmer

A programmer writes the instructions the computer needs to display your website, allow you to buy a product, etc. A designer knows what looks good on a screen and how to get the best visual effect. It is rare (read expensive) to find someone who is both a great designer and a skilled programmer. You should look for a web company that has separate designers and programmers, that way you end up with a site that works and looks good.

Online Strategy

It is amazing at how many websites are out there that have no correlation to the company’s business strategy.
A website should contribute to the marketing goals of a company and should be measured by the same R.O.I. scale as any other part of the business. If your designer has not asked you about your companies business strategy, and builds a site on what he/she thinks will look good, because the logo changes colour or the menu items look “cool” then it is time to get another designer. Linking your website and your business strategy is a complex process that requires the help of a marketing and sales specialist.

Plastic Prospects

When I started on my sales career some 20 + years ago my first Sales Manager said “here is a customer list ring them up make a meeting and find out what they want. Remember you have two ears and one mouth use them in that proportion – ask them questions and listen to the answers, then come back and we will figure out what the best solution is for them” That was his first sales training lesson. That first lesson has been the basis of my entire selling career.
All those years ago it was easier to make meetings with existing and potential customers. A sales person was a little bit like the old travelling minstrel full of news and different ways of doing things. The sales person had information and news that the prospects and customers were interested in hearing. In 2010 the internet is the travelling minstrel with more information and news then any sales person could ever have and available immediately! There is so much information out there that customers are less inclined to spend valuable time with a salesperson, in-fact some sales people struggle to get their story heard above the “white noise” of modern media.
Imagine that in front of you there is a big bowl of metal and plastic paperclips. The metal paperclips are prospects and the plastic paperclips are not. There are several ways to get the prospects out of the bowl, you can pull one out at a time feel it to see if it is metal or not, then put the metal paperclip into another bowl. The problem is you spend the same amount of time on the plastic prospects as you spend on the solid metal prospects. If you spend half your time dealing with plastic prospects you are wasting valuable selling time. Picking out the prospects one at a time was the tried and true method of finding prospects in the past. The problem today is the metal and the plastic prospect look very much the same, separating them is harder than it has ever been. How do you separate the real from the plastic without wasting effort on the plastic prospects? What happens if you drag a magnet through the bowl? The magnet comes out with lots of metal prospects and leaves the plastic ones behind. You have also increased your selling time as you do not have to deal with the plastic prospects.

The key to running a magnet through your prospects is to be able to automate your email marketing from your website. Producing a Webpage and sending that content to a specific group of customers or prospects, then being able to track who has looked at the email and who hasn’t, then applying different follow up methods to each sub group.