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I Don’t Understand? – I can remember being fresh out of High School and working for a contractor. Some of the people I worked with had a bad attitude about the lifestyle the owner was able to live.

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The marketing problem As a Duct Tape Marketing Authorized Consultant I get a lot of marketing questions asked of me. “Should I be using Twitter, how about Facebook, what about direct mail, etc., etc.?”

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Let’s take a minute and decide what marketing strategy is not. Your marketing strategy should be a clear explanation of how you’re going to get there, not what or where “There” is.

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There is an old saying that say’s, “People will buy on emotion, but justify their decision intellectually.” If you study marketing and sales, you will probably discover this saying has it’s roots in copywriting. The type of copywriting I’m referring to is sales copywriting.

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What is your marketing timing trigger? Your marketing timing trigger is the reason why you take action on looking for and buying a specific product or service. For example if you run out of toothpaste and then go to the store to buy more, you had a marketing timing trigger. The marketing timing trigger was [...]

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Why your sales call can get off track, and how to get it on track from the start. I don’t suppose you’ve ever been on a sales call where you hit it off with your prospect, and then spend 50-minutes of an hour sales call just creating rapport have you? It happens all the time, in all industries and businesses.

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Have you ever struggled to start the conversation about money on your sales call? If so, you’re not alone. I find that most sales people struggle to discuss money on their sales calls. This is partly due to the way you think about money. Do you believe money is scarce or plentiful? What do your parents believe about money?

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This is a pretty simple yes or no answer with this question. I find that many small business owners say yes to this question, but then share with me that their execution is weak.

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As long as it takes you to have an effective sales call. This is my simple answer to the length of time your sales call should take. The more complex answer is about to follow, but it will give you the information you need to effectively execute your sales call. What usually happens?

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Do you remember when Toyota was having some issues with the Prius? I don’t know for sure how many problems people had with their cars before the media eventually broke the story, but I would venture to say it was a fairly large number.

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Whenever I share the basic concept of “people love to buy, but they hate to be sold” small business owners always agree with it. But when you look at how the majority of small businesses go to the market and sell their products and services, they are always selling. Is this stupid behavior, or just because you don’t know any better?

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When I coach clients to work towards expanding your current client relationships, I always want you to ask some variation of this question. The goal of the question is to continuously work towards improving the relationship and making sure you’re on the same page with your clients.

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“I’m happy with the way things are now. We are just happy to maintain the business we have. My people already have good experience. We’re doing fine.” These are just some of the statements I have heard from small business owners, President’s of companies, Vice Presidents of Marketing & Sales, and sales managers.

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Have you ever sent your people to training, and they don’t seem to learn anything? You are not alone. This seems to happen more often than not.
It makes it very difficult for you as a small business owner to have a warm fuzzy feeling about investing in training your people.

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