Here are some of the dumber things I have heard from people about marketing and sales: I think I’ll place one ad in a trade magazine do you think that will be worth the money? I sent out a hundred sales letters and only received ten responses and five orders. We decided to make this […]
How Well Do Your Customers Really Know You?
As always, it’s all about the customers and more importantly, it really gets down to what your customers think about you. I want you to really think about this for a minute or two. What do your customers think about your company? What do they think about how you do business? Would they recommend you […]
You Gotta Keep Trying
Even after 11 tries! I read a book the other day that said that you have to make at least eleven contacts with a company before they become a customer. Eleven contacts? Wow no wonder so many people don’t make it in sales? Eleven is about eight more than most people I know, try before […]
You Have To Love Your Product
You’d better love what you sell. That’s what successful salespeople do. First, a true story about company loyalty…on steroids! My father was a very hard-working Coca Cola salesman. No matter the weather, rain, or shine, snow, sleet, hail, whatever, he was out there every day driving on the back roads of Maine, delivering his heavy […]
On Selling Value
Let’s stop and think for a minute. What can you offer that goes way beyond the product itself? What can you offer that will get your customer thinking beyond price issues? What do you have to offer that will make your customer tremble with terror when his CPA suggests dumping you because your prices are […]
Finding & Hiring The Right Sales Rep
Just think how much time and money you can save by choosing the right sales person for your sales force. If you take the time to do it right, if you develop and implement a hiring process that fully vets the candidate before you hire her, it will pay off exponentially. Hiring too fast is […]
Questions To Ask Potential Sales Reps
The problem with finding and hiring the right sales person is that, well they are sales people, they know how to sell, they know how to talk a good game, in fact so good a game that it’s hard to figure out if they are in fact really good or just great talkers! So you […]
How To Beat The Big Guys
Author’s note: while this post is geared towards the Printed Circuit Board industry, most of the ideas are applicable to other industries. There has for some time now been an ever growing gap in annual revenue numbers between the large international board shops and the smaller local board shops. While most of the smaller North […]
When Customers Stop Complaining, You’d Better Start Worrying.
A few years ago, I worked with a client that won and then lost thirty customers all in the span of ten months. The deal was they had bought the customer base of a company that as going out of business. They also hired a few key people from that company to help with the […]
Demanding Customers Driving You Crazy? Good Problem To Have
There is nothing dumber you can do than getting mad at a customer. What is the point? These days when it is harder than ever to get a new customer and even harder to keep that customer amidst the barrage of competition coming for all sides there is nothing more counter-productive than getting mad at […]