Personal Networking should always be a part of your marketing plan, but now more than ever this is THE time to get out there and network!  Join your local chamber, or referral group such as BNI.  BNI is the largest referral and business networking organization in the world. Continue reading →

It’s hard to believe that I wrote my last article on this topic about a year ago, but I guess recession fears were brewing even last March.  Now we already know that we’ve been experiencing a real recession for several months.  I have never owned a business in this type of economy, and I’m sure many business owners would say the same thing; so it’s a bit hard to know how to navigate through it.  I believe that, as always, careful planning and sensibility will get you through it, so here are some ideas: Continue reading →

I just got a nice holiday card from a vendor…opened it up, and his business card was enclosed! I don’t know about you, but to me, this is a bit of a turn-off. What this commuicates to me is, “I’m sending this card as a way to remind you to do business with me.” I think this message would have been much more effective had it not included a business card.

One thing I learned long ago – do things without being salesy and you will stand out from the crowd. When I meet someone at a Chamber function, I send them a nice letter saying how nice it was to meet them, and that I look forward to seeing them again at future events. That’s it. No card, no “please let me know if I can be of service..” Why? because that’s expected – because that cheesiness is what everybody does, so I just send a letter saying “Nice meeting you,” and by doing that I think I look like I am more genuine and have more integrity.

Just send a Holiday card! No need to always be selling!

Search Engine Optimization seems to always have been about tactics. Website owners are constantly asking, “What tactics can I employ to get ranked higher on the major search engines?” Some tactics include peppering web pages with key words, adding a long list of links on the bottom of each page, adding another long list of cities served on the bottom of a page, and similar “tricks” which focus mainly on search engines, not human visitors. While many of these tactics work, they are short-sighted and can often backfire. I’ve seen so many websites rank well, only to wonder why they’re not generating any sales. Continue reading →

You know those little icons that appear in your browser next to a url when visiting a website, and the ones you see next to the site name when you bookmark a page? Well, if you want to create one for your site, it’s pretty easy. All you need is the graphic you’d like to use as the icon, best in .jpg format. (It’s best to make it a simple and small icon, since it’s so small when it appears on your site’s url.)

Then, go to this site: http://www.chami.com/html-kit/services/favicon/ to convert the .jpg file to a .fav file, and then upload it via ftp to your site’s root directory, and your done. In some cases your favicon may take a few days to show up, and please note that certain older versions of Internet Explorer may not show them for some strange reason.

For SEO purposes, having an XML sitemap is extremely important. An XML sitemap is a page of code which is downloaded onto your web server where your website files reside, and its purpose is to alert Google’s spiders of all of the pages of your site which exist. Without the sitemap, it’s possible that Google’s crawling bots may miss some of your pages, but the sitemap says, “hey, look here – here’s a list of all of the pages on my site that you should crawl.” Continue reading →

Do you have a backup of your website files? If your website goes down and the hosting company cannot bring it back up, will you be in deep trouble? While most hosting companies back up their servers regularly, it’s still a good idea to back up your files. If you own an e-commerce site, you especially should back up often, since your hosting company’s backup may be several days old, and you risk losing all of your more recent transactions. Continue reading →

A friend of mine recently asked me to recommend some good books on sales and business. I thought it would be good to share that here. My list is far from perfect, and there may be many great books missing from the list – but these are the books that I helped me grow personally and professionally.

The following should be read by any salesperson or professional: Continue reading →

In the course of making cold calls, it’s inevitable to be asked to send your info via e-mail so that the prospect can look it over before making a decision. Although this can be frustrating to the telemarketer, who obviously prefers to make an immediate sale, this can be turned into an opportunity.

Rather than just send the e-mail and do the normal follow-up, why not compile all these e-mail leads, and use them for e-mail marketing? Add them to your monthly or quarterly e-mail newsletter list. E-mail marketing is extrememly effective, and some prospects may respond better to that medium. Plus, if they’re not ready to commit now, your e-mails will keep you on their mind and when they are ready, they will remember you and you will likely get the sale.

Remember, though – getting someone’s e-mail is not your goal on the phone – making a sale is. But when you have no choice but to get the e-mail, do not despair – send them your info, and then keep that e-mail on file for future use!

A few thoughts to follow up my entry about e-mail addiction – the reasons why I think e-mail addiction is so bad:

The obvious – e-mail addiction is a compulsion, and this is enough to drive you insane.

The less obvious – clients who receive extremely rapid e-mail responses from you will be conditioned to always expect this. This is problematic for 2 reasons: Continue reading →