Digg it UP - Business

Designing the Perfect Business Card
I’ve been a designer and advertising consultant for over 35 years. I’ve seen my share of business cards and I have a few words addressed to those companies that might benefit from my expertise. I’m not talking to those professionals that are categorized by attorneys, physicians, dentists, insurance agents and accountants. You’ve seen their cards that are traditional black raised print on a white uncoated cover stock paper. They probably also contain a tastefully, understated logo, or credential, of their profession. To those of you I say, that’s barely adequate.Instead, I’m speaking to the average company that has a basic logo and spent between $50 and $100 on a thousand stock cards that a local ‘Quick Print,’ provides. They often have a plethora of sample borders, backgrounds, and other templates from which you can choose. Then one gives the printer the pertinent data and bam! You have a profession-looking card.Now so fast. Have you ever considered what the business card means to the business? That lowly piece of 2 x 3.5 inch paper represents the entire company. It is often the first place someone is introduced to the firm. When the card is handed to the potential customer, what does it really say? Besides the obvious name, address, and phone number, does it convey an accurate image of the company?Or does it say, “Hey, I didn’t have the time or patience to really think this thing through, so this is the best I can do for now.” Is that what you want the public to think?Those professionals I first mentioned, have a secret society that wants their card to be more of an after-thought. For them, it says, “I really didn’t have to make this card at all because I’m already overwhelmed by clients, but here it is and treasure it. I rarely give out cards to the little people like you anyway.”But for everyone else, allow the card to be a silent salesperson. Give it the attention it deserves. Use full color to display a dynamic logo or photo. Print it on glossy 12 or 14 point stock with a aqueous coating to make it appear even more shiny. Insure that all the type is 12 points or larger for good readability. This is especially true for the phone number. I’ve seen several cases where that important number is tiny and hard to find. Try a bold color and a dis

o sales styles, understand which role you do best in. Exploit your strengths and find a partner that has complimentary strengths so you can leverage each other.

# 9 Increase Your Number of Cold Calls: If you implement only one idea out of this article THIS IS THE ONE! Don’t waste your time with anything else unless you cold call – a lot. Look at any report that measures correlation of the success of an individual sales person, or sales team, with the number of cold calls. The number just don’t lie. There is an absolute, and direct, correlation to the number of cold calls and the success of a sales person, or team.

Cold calling is just a form of networking. Everyone in the company can support cold calling campaigns, whether you are in sales or not. Cold calling is as simple as calling someone you know, a friend/associate, in a company that is not a current customer, or in a different division in a current customer, and having a conversation about their business – everyone loves to talk about themselves. Keep in mind that you do not need to close the order. You need to initiate the contact and then get a sales person involved. You can continue to follow up with the sales person as the opportunity materializes to an order. Just make sure that, once you have initiated contact, you communicate through the sales person or you just might become the problem.

# 10 Perform and Leverage Win/Loss Reviews: Win/loss reviews are probably the most valuable sales tool to use AT ALL TIMES, and not just in tough times. Unfortunately, since most of the results of th

Charismatic Communication - Discovering and Building a Mutual Space with Your Audience - Part One
Charismatic communication demands a transaction between speaker and listeners, and, as with most forms of fair-trading, customer satisfaction is predicated on exchanging things of equal value. For example, in exchange for a piece of electronic equipment at your local electrical store, you hand over its alleged value in dollars. In effect, the salesman buys your money with the piece of equipment.Similar dynamics apply when you seek to buy people's commitment to your proposals or ideas. So, what currency do you need to use to purchase attention and a fair hearing from your audience? The currency comes in three denominations:1. Discovery 2. Groundwork 3. DialogueYou can choose to spend a reasonable amount of time in discovery mode. It's part of a process of learning about the people you intend to influence. It enables you to gain an insight into their personal worldviews, and the information you gather enables you to respect fully their models of the world and talk their particular dialect.Groundwork is also a key element, as it represents the preparation phase, of involving others in discussion and debate on the desirability and value of your position and ideas. It enables you to respond with feedback and engage in a mutual search for alternatives. It also provides you with the opportunity to informally test ideas on potential adversaries and modify your approach as you go along.You can test, revise, hone, and polish your message before you arrive at a final product that incorporates the key needs of your target group. There are many benefits in accommodating other people's concerns, ideas and solutions into your final strategy or proposal. Your groundwork phase can often save you from embarrassing and sometimes perilous consequences.Dialogue is the art of talking with people rather than talking at them or pretending to consult. It can occur during every stage of the communication process. Formal dialogue, as in a presentation or proposal, best occurs at the stage when you are certain of winning assent and support.Open dialogue encourages commitment and motivation. It alerts you to the emotional temperature of your audience or group and avoids having an idea or strategy stall through covert opposition and resistance at every turn.<

At the forefront of driving revenue is the sales team; however everyone, from the receptionist to the CEO, is vital for accelerated revenue success. No matter what position you hold in your company you can use the many low-to-no cost strategies in this article to accelerate revenue.

# 1 Set Your Goals and Objectives: Members of the sales team usually have a quota assigned to them by management. If you are not part of the sales team you probably do not have a direct quota, however the more value you add to the revenue driving activities of your company, the more valuable you are to the company. If you are not part of sales, make a commitment, even if you don’t tell anyone about it, to do what ever you can to drive revenue up and to costs down.

Make sure that you hold yourself accountable. I have found that one key de-motivator, including self de-motivation, is an imbalance of accountability – even if it is perceived and not real. This imbalance is caused when your actions are not inline with your goals and objectives. Manage yourself and your activity consistently and you will see the results in your top line.

# 2 Know Where You Are Now: Before you start any journey you need a map, a plan in the case of your accelerated revenue driving activities. Before this journey begins it is important to know where you are going (discussed in the previous section) and where you are now. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

- Where are you against your goals?

- Where is your company against its goals?

- Are your goals inline with your company’s?

# 3 Know Your Value: Take an inventory of yourself. Understand what you do well, what you do OK, and what you don’t do well at all. Then leverage what you do well and improve on what you do OK and not well at all. Constantly, review your progress and keep adding new skills to your training regimen.

# 4 Know Your Company’s Value: Look at your company. What does your company do very well? What is the value of that product/service? Value from your customer’s perspective – not yours. How does this product/service increase revenue or decrease cost for your customer? (Not how can you offer the product/service cheaper than your competition.) Or does it increase efficiency or reduce risk (subset of reduced cost). Again, for your customer, not you.

Focus most of your energy on leveraging those things your company does extremely well. Especially, those products/services that add the most value to your customer. This is probably where you can increase revenue the most.

# 5 Increase Key Lead Generation Activities:

- Write newsletters for existing and potential customers;

- Provide Free, or Low Initial Buy-in, offers to drive paid product/service business;

- Write white papers;

- Develop positioning papers;

- Conduct short, value focused, seminars on how you help your clients increase revenue and decrease cost

# 6 Automate all Sales Reporting: Use my simple and short three step process to develop your sales reporting system. Here it is:

1) Define Sales Reporting Needs: be focused on the deal and on the client’s timeline;

2) Establish Sales Reporting Needs: make reporting quick and easy for everyone; and

3) Execute and refine as you gain a better understanding of what information is really useful.

I don’t recommend that your company spends $5M, or even $5/month, on a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. They take too long to add value anyway - the point of this article is results in 30 days. Look at what you need to report and report it in the most efficient and effective way possible. Leverage information technology, if that makes sense, or just have a process flow for hard copy reports. Define reporting parameters beforehand and make sure that you report in regularly.

# 7 Get Help / Offer Help: Show your management that, by having a sales admin you can increase revenue by X. Or reduce cost of sales by Y. Or …whatever metric you can use that shows increased efficiency, value, to the company that you couldn’t do on your own. This sales admin person/team could also support more than one sales person. Show value in real terms and you might get a favorable response.

For example, if I was going to pitch this I might say “ Mr., or Mrs. Boss, it has been my experience that, in most cases, Sales admin staff keep more expensive, and productive, sales people (like me) in front of, or on the phone with, a customer, prospect, or suspect. In a layered sales force I feel that can contribute even more time to the sales cycle and won’t spend valuable time on areas of the sales process that I am not as efficient, or cost effective, in. The key here is not to hire more sales staff, it is to get more revenue dollars for every hour of my effort.”

If you are not a sales person, then offer to help. Talk to the sales team and determine where you might offer assistance. Working together with sales will give sales a renewed appreciation of you and your department. It will also give you a renewed appreciation of sales. Together you and your partner(s) in sales can revitalize accelerated revenue efforts while being an example for the rest of the company to follow

# 8 Leverage Your Hunter and Farmer Skills: There are two types of sales styles to focus on to accelerate revenue, Hunters and Farmers. These two types apply to inside and outside sales people.

Hunters are those sales people that love the thrill of the kill. As soon as they ‘close’ the deal they are on to the next. And they are very good at it. The main weakness of the hunter is that they typically do not nurture accounts – they lose interest in the account as soon as the ‘deal is closed.

Farmers nurture accounts. They typically don’t penetrate new accounts. They take those accounts first closed by the hunters and expand them. Closing opportunity by opportunity, until they have sold all that they could sell into that account. The weakness of the farmer is that the company that they work for must continue to evolve, adding new products and services, or the value of the farmer drops quickly, for that account, to the company they work for.

The key is for you to understand the two sales styles, understand which role you do best in. Exploit your strengths and find a partner that has complimentary strengths so you can leverage each other.

Illegal Aliens and the Illegal Businesses that Hire Them
It is against the law to knowingly hire an illegal alien, but some industries do it all the time. Most of us know which ones these are. But it is amazing that when we as Americans see this we do not say anything about it or even bother to make a simple phone call to turn them in and help turn down the inflows of illegal aliens to our nation.May I ask you why you allow illegal aliens to work in your neighborhood and say nothing about it, but complain to your friends about the illegal immigration situation in our nation? Why do you send emails back and forth on the subject to friends, yet allow it to go on right under your nose like this? Wouldn’t you say that you are being rather hypocritical on this issue? I mean consider what you are doing and saying and how they really do not match. What am I talking about you ask?Well simple really; Your local carwash. The car wash, which has been there for years and you often go to; the one, which has in fact been hiring illegal aliens in your neighborhood for over ten years. Not are they hiring illegal aliens and breaking the law, but they are also doing it to exploit people, so they can make more money. Yet, you sit there and watch these illegal aliens dry off your car and then you hand them a $2.00 tip and get in your clean car and drive way?Interesting that you are such a hypocrite? Ask yourself; “Do I suck or what?” then ask yourself when you are going to pick-up up that phone and use some of those 250 minutes per month to make that call and do the right thing and turn in this illegal business, which is hiring illegal aliens? Consider this and do it today.

ith your company’s?