5 Ways to Build Your Business

Posted on August 29, 2010 by admin
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Business owners today need every competitive edge they can get. A few (often overlooked) key ways to build your business will give you the jumpstart you’ve been looking for.
1. Evaluate (Or Create) Your Mission Statement
Look at your company’s goals and main objectives. Does your mission statement reflect what you are ultimately hoping to accomplish? Do you need to focus more on customer satisfaction? Appeal to a wider demographic to increase sales? Thinking about areas with room for improvement will help you adjust your mission statement to include the details that will boost your bottom line.
2. Revamp Your Website
First of all, if your business doesn’t have a website; start one. With the web-wild world we live in, there is no good reason not to have an online presence. If you already have a website, take an objective look at every page (or hire an experienced consultant to do it for you) and ask yourself key questions like: Is my site user-friendly? Do I explain my services in clear, concise terms? Are all of my links working properly? Does my site look outdated or dull in comparison with others offering similar services? Regularly checking for broken links, spelling errors and other mistakes are crucial steps to maintaining a professional site that will impress potential customers.
3. Reach Out and Network
Are you on Facebook? LinkedIn? You should be. The more places people can click to your site, the better. Linking your site with other (non-competing) sites is a good way to network online and reach more audiences. Have you made sure that your company is being advertised online with as many search engines as possible? Yahoo, Google and Bing will even list your business for free. Consider starting a blog or distributing a monthly newsletter. Don’t make it difficult for customers to find out about you.
4. Develop a More Effective Advertising Strategy
If you have to struggle to come up with what your advertising strategy is, you probably don’t have one. A clearly defined strategy with a detailed action plan is crucial to your advertising success. You may need to hire a professional consultant, but knowing what demographic to appeal to and how you can best reach your target audience is the only way to make the most out of your advertising dollar. It won’t take long to see a solid ROI (Return On Investment) if you have an effective advertising strategy.
5. Better Your Brand
You have two or three seconds to grab a person’s interest and give them a reason to learn more about your company. If you have a weak or boring logo, catalog or internet browsers will pass by your advertisement in the blink of an eye. Your company’s logo should be strong, unique and compelling. Branding your business is the first step in creating a lasting bond between you and your customer. A good logo establishes credibility, helps develop loyal customers, and gives your company a personality.
Putting off building your business until you are better established or have more cash flow is a mistake. Experts agree that sloppy or ineffectual marketing is one of the most common reasons businesses fail. If you are serious about expanding, an aggressive approach to marketing your business is the only way to go (and grow).

Business owners today need every competitive edge they can get. A few (often overlooked) key ways to build your business will give you the jumpstart you’ve been looking for.

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Sales Goals Or Sales Process, Which is Most Important?

Posted on August 29, 2010 by admin
Geoffrey James wrote an interesting article at BNET, Sales Goals vs. Sales Process: Which Is Most Important? Frankly, the question confuses me, it assumes that sales goals and sales process are mutually exclusive. Geoffrey seems conflicted, as well. Later, using the example of an Olympic athlete, he states, “For the Olympic athlete, the process leads naturally and progressively towards the goal.”
The whole point of a sales process is that it is goal directed. The best sales processes represent the organization’s best experience in winning business-achieving goals. The only reason to have a sales process is because it provides us a road map to effectively and efficiently achieve our goals.
I think that’s what is missed by a lot of people in developing and implementing sales processes – and a reason why so many sales professionals resist “process.” Too often, organizations develop a process, thinking the process is an end in itself, not a means of achieving goals. Organizations sometimes get consumed in the “elegance of their process.” Many years ago, one very large organization I worked with had done a huge amount of work in developing the sales process. The end results was a nine page single spaced checklist, attempting to outline everything that might accur in a sale. The process was comprehensive-but it was complicated, the design team had lost sight of the purpose of the process. They were consumed in their task-designing the sales process, losing sight of the purpose: Closing more business more quickly. As you might guess, the sales process was never used by the sales people. It was too complicated, too bureaucratic, and did not contribute to their ability to achieve their goals.
The whole point of a sales process is that it is goal directed. I think James confuses things, focusing on the end – “quota attainment, closing the deal.” A great sales process has interim milestones-goals-go/no go decisions. For example the goal of all the activities we undertake in the qualification step of the selling process is to determine if we have a qualified opportunity. The goal of the activities in the discovery phase of the process is to understand what the customer is trying to achieve, alternatives they are considering, and how they will make the decision. These interim goals keep us on the path to achieving the end goal. Without these interim goals, we could be executing a lot of activities, but not know if we are achieving the right outcomes for each activity. My good friend Anthony Iannarino, calls this “checking the box.” We go through the motions of the activity, not paying attention to why we are doing the activity-consequently it becomes meaningless.
Here’s an example, it came up with a client last week. They were reviewing their work on developing their sales process. At one point in their process, they had identified an activity, “Meet with decision makers.” I immediately went into role-play, shook each of their hands saying, “Hi, I’m Dave Brock.” Having done that, I checked off the box on the piece of paper they had given me. When they recovered from this, we talked about it. I told them I had successfully completed the activity, but it had contributed nothing to moving me forward in the sales process, improving my knowledge about the deal, or improving my ability to present a winning response to their needs.
Each activity has a purpose or outcome, we are not executing activities for activity sake. I think this is one of the reasons that so many people resist sales process-it has been badly designed, focusing on activity for activity sake, rather than activity oriented toward specific outcomes or goals. Using the previous example, the activity would have been far more impactful if it was changed from “Meet with decision-makers,” to “Meet with decision makers to understand who is involved in the decision, their roles, and the criteria they will consider in making their decision.” An effective sales process has a goal or an outcome in each step of the process.
I think James’ article reflects the problems many sales executives and professionals have with sales processes. We really don’t understand why we are doing the process. Consequently we design processes as and end, not a means to achieve our goals. We think processes are a series of activities-they are, but the activities are outcome oriented and goal directed. They provide us interim milestones and checkpoints on effectively and efficiently achieving our goal.
Which is most important, the sales process or sales goals is the wrong question. How do we define a sales process that most effectively and efficiently helps us achieve our goals is the issue we must all be confronting!
Having trouble with translating your activities into meaningful steps to achieving your goals, call me, I’d be glad to share our experience in helping organizations do this!
Dave Brock is President and CEO of Partners In EXCELLENCE, a global management, leadership, sales, and marketing consulting company. Partners In EXCELLENCE helps clients achieve the highest levels of performance by focusing on the customer.

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Online PR Marketing

Posted on August 29, 2010 by admin

The Internet is a very unusual place of interaction. Just imagine that simple, sometimes even ugly looking informational products can have a much better effect upon the target audience than a bulk of fancy looking, super professional media kit of a PR company. Is it true that “going cheap and primitive” can have better results against “top notch” in online PR marketing? Perhaps, this has a lot to do with human psychology. We all live in a super-over-advertised world. Business brands, political brands, ideological brands are fighting for every split second of our undivided attention. And people know about it. People got tired of it. People resent it. This attitude creates a certain level of bounce effect when people see a lovely looking video created by real experts. Or a nicely done banner which naturally screams off something like “I was created by a professional web designer so that you love me.” Instead, when people see an ugly, primitively-recorded video with very unprofessional narration – they can treat it much better. Because don’t feel like this could be done by their neighbor who simply wanted to vent off (or share experience, or give a hint) and – thus – recorded this video. Of course, it would be very blatant to say – “let’s go primitive on our PR media kits and this will instantly rise the effect from the online campaigns that we are doing.” Still, there is a very interesting trend for going simpler with the audience. And, when done properly, this can have a very good effect. Plus, it helps to make the budget of your online PR marketing campaigns much cheaper. A simple video – $50 Simple forum post – $20 Blog comment – $10 Press release (not professional, simple one) – $50 Add to this certain budget for link building so that these public opinion units (information that you create to build public opinion about a certain issue) – and that’s it. All this can be cheaper than $1,000. And if your niche is not very competitive – it can be even $500 Do you imagine that sort of budgets from top 10 PR agencies? Hardly… This is a nice food for your brain and a nice money-saver for your purse. Please feel welcome to join the discussion about new public relations techniques on this blog post, your unbiased feedback will be highly appreciated

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Hello world!

Posted on August 28, 2010 by admin

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

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