| |
| |
|
Marketing Information |
|
|
|
Survival Strategies
1. Do the moneymaking things first. For an entrepreneur, generating income is the most important job. Without income, your business will cease to exist. 2. Develop a sales and marketing plan. What are you selling? Who is going to buy it? Where and how will you find them? Establish your sales goals, and then view your plan as your map to reach those goals. 3. Follow your sales and marketing plan. While plans do sometimes change, one of the biggest challenges faced by entrepreneurs is how to be proactive rather than merely reactive. Having a plan in place and following it allows the entrepreneur to move the business forward. 4. Do at least three things every day to promote your business. In the immediacy of day-to-day business life, it is easy to let sales and marketing activities fall by the wayside. Keeping on top of and servicing existing accounts seems to always take precedence over developing new accounts. But without new accounts, there are no future accounts! Keep your momentum by doing at least three sales/marketing/promotional items every day. 5. Do the things you do well. Hire people or partner with others to do the rest. You cannot expect yourself to do everything perfectly. Even if you did, there are not that many hours in a day. Do what you do well. Do what makes money. Delegate the rest. 6. Delegate appropriately and effectively. Find people whom you trust to do what needs to be done. Be clear about your expectations and their responsibilities. 7. Give employees some autonomy in their decision-making process. Once you have the appropriate people in place, let them do their job. Micromanaging is not a good use of your time. You have hired your employees to do the things you cannot do or do not want to do. Let them do it. 8. Encourage employees to think creatively. Encourage an atmosphere of ownership and responsibility by allowing employees to offer suggestions, make changes and discover new possibilities. 9. Minimize paperwork and bureaucracy. While accurate records are important, records and paperwork are meant to help, not be an end in themselves. Always ask yourself if a particular procedure helps or hinders. Decide what to do accordingly. 10. Schedule time to have fun. Enough said. Wendy Weiss, "The Queen of Cold Calling & Selling Success," is a sales trainer, author and sales coach. Her recently released program, Cold Calling College, and/or her book, Cold Calling for Women, can be ordered by visiting http://www.wendyweiss.com. Contact her at wendy@wendyweiss.com. Get Wendy's free e-zine at http://www.wendyweiss.com. © 2004 Wendy Weiss
MORE RESOURCES:
Marketing - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Get More Clients From Networking - Follow The Rules Of Dating! If you're a business owner, you probably spend quite a lot of your time at networking events. In fact, it may be the main way you try to get new clients. Do You Really Need a Brochure? The phone rings. Good news. Focusing Your Marketing Efforts One of my favorite quotes is often used to describe goal-setting -- but it applies equally well to your marketing efforts. We start with Alice lost in the woods in Wonderland, where she comes upon the Cheshire-Cat. Behold the Power of the Tip You are an expert. You have lots of content - even more than you deliver from the presentation platform or in your consulting engagements. A Creative RIOT Relevant, original and impactful: that's what my friend Creative Director Jim Mountjoy says that effective creative must be. With apologies to Jim, I have my own acronym because I think ROI is only 75 percent of the way there. Financial Services Marketing Insights: A Marketing Compass What we now call "marketing" began long before the name was coined. In the mid-1800s, traveling salesmen dressed "snake oil" and other tonics in fancy packaging and extolled their virtues to a gullible public. Self Promotion Brings Business Success Your business success depends on your ability to promote your services, your products, and yourself. Fortunately, promotion is simple. Marketing Gurus : Do You Need One? Its become fashionable to bash marketing "gurus" nowadays.There are some for whom the prospect of even looking at someone as a "guru" is a sin. Corporate Cleavage I enjoy cleavage as much or even more than the next guy. However, after reading my latest issue of Men's Health magazine, I checked my Encarta dictionary and looked up the word "cleavage". Free or Not Free - That is the Question You may be in business for yourself or as a small company, but no matter what, especially if you just started this business, you need publicity! It's great that your spouse or best friend believes in you. You may even have total strangers tell you what a great idea you have. Writing Marketing Copy That Sells When your prospects see your marketing materials, your brochure, your web site or your ads you want them to read them. You want prospects to read not just the first sentence but the majority of your copy. Supply And Demand And Marketing According to Dough McCormick, Chariman and CEO of iVillage, Inc, "Technologists focus on supply but they don't understand advertising is focused on demand. Just because we have an available ad doesn't mean we have to sell it. Direct Mail Response Rates Low? Eliminate These Mistakes Are your direct mail response rates lower than you expect? Check your sales letter or direct mail package against this checklist to uncover the reasons for your poor response.LIST You are mailing to people who are never likely to buy You are not mailing to others in the same business who influence the buying decision Your list is out of date Your names and addresses are not formatted correctly for proper delivery Your list has job titles only, not namesFORMAT You are using the wrong format for your audience (self-mailers to professionals, for example) Your letter and brochure are not complete sales pitches in themselves Your liftnote or buckslip confuses your offer or main selling promiseENVELOPE Your envelope gives too much away, so your prospects throw it away unopened Your mailing envelope looks like junk mail Your package is addressed to "Occupant" and not to a person by nameMESSAGE Your letter lacks a strong, customer-focussed headline The opening line in your letter is not compelling You spell your prospective customer's name incorrectly Your letter lacks specifics about product size, weight, color and other vital details You discuss product features but not customer benefits You talk too much about your company and not enough about your reader You do not create enough desire Your letter lacks urgency You do not offer a guaranteeOFFER You are offering the same thing that your competitors are offering Your offer is not specific Your offer is not exclusive Your offer is not relevant Your offer is not valuable Your offer is not unique Your offer is not usefulCALL TO ACTION You do not ask for the order You ask for the order, but too late in your letter You conclude by saying, "If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact me" You give too many ways to respond-or not enoughREPLY DEVICE Your reply device is too cluttered You do not tell prospects what to do to buy your product or service Your reply device is not postage-paidTIMING You are mailing at the wrong time of the year Your letter is arriving on the wrong day of the week You are mailing too often, so prospects ignore you You are not mailing often enough, so prospects do not remember youAbout the author Alan Sharpe is a business-to-business direct mail copywriter who helps business owners and marketing managers generate leads, close sales and retain customers using creative direct mail. Small Business Pricing: Setting A Price For Your Product / Service The importance of pricing can not be underestimated as incorrect pricing can often result in the failure of a business. New businesses often make the mistake of either charging too little or too much for their product or service. Marketing For Profit - 6 Critical Traits Develop These Six Critical Marketing Traits.. 5 Tips to Help You Identify WHO To Market To If you have your own small business, it's important to decide exactly who you will be marketing your products or services to. After all, you probably don't have the time or the money to market to everyone. Tradeshow Booth Cures - Knick-Knack Knockouts Okay, we were kidding about the smoke, but not about the mirrors. Mirrors are exceptionally useful Feng Shui devices, especially in regards to manipulating the flow of energy. Five Steps to a Web Site That Sells I'm always amazed that people would spend months to develop their web site, pay thousands of dollars to have it put together and then.. Marketing as a Spiritual Practice II: Unearthing Your Potential Marketing as we know it is over. Done. Trade Show Promotions That Are Memorable If you have been to expos and trade shows as an attendee like me you would be familiar with the exciting prospect of carrying home a heavy plastic bag of trade show promotions, the end result though is usually the trade show promotions end up down the back of the couch, on the floor or in the bottom dusty drawer of your desk, hopefully reading this article on tradeshow promotions, your gift to clients and prospects will not share the same fate.Your tradeshow promotions will need to be carefully chosen to both compete with your competitors and retain the attention of the reciever after the event.
|
| home | site map |
| © 2006 |
