Online Course Review – Online Sales, Pricing and Marketing

As many of you probably know already, I am a sucker (sorry!) for anything business training related. With a history in business like mine, starting with no proper business knowledge, failing miserably, dusting off, learning business and starting again, this time to succeed, it probably comes as no surprise that first and foremost I preach the importance of learning how to run a company before you actually do it.

That’s one of the reasons why I got quite intrigued when High Speed Training asked if I would like to have a look at their courses.

High Speed Training offers a number of business (and not only) courses, ranging in topics from starting a business, business writing, customer service through time management to crisis management and beyond. Below you will find my review of a course that was the closest to my heart – Online Sales, Pricing and Marketing.

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Filed Under: Marketing, Sales

9 Tips for Improving Your Sales Copy

Your marketing materials communicate to customers what your product, service or business is all about, but there’s more to it than just writing about why people should buy from you. Consumers are bombarded with advertising everywhere they look, so they’ve learned to tune most of it out. Attracting the right customers, then, takes not just the right approach, but the ability to compete with many other businesses for consumers’ attention — many of which have been very carefully crafting appealing sales copy for years.

Luckily, intriguing copy is a skill that can be learned. Follow these tips for more effective sales copy:

1. Grab customers’ attention right in the headline. Most people will not stop to read your sales copy, no matter how well-written it is, unless something about it grabs their attention right away. Start with a catchy headline, perhaps including tried and true words like “free,” “– percent off,” “this month only,” or some similar variation.

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Filed Under: Sales

Lessons for Small Business Owners from Another’s Success Story

What’s your story? This question is asked by Tasha Oldham, founder of My Story Inc. who invites you to tell the story of your business and in turn they will help you tell the world about it through film. My Story is based out of Venice, CA with filmmakers all over the U.S. who create marketing stories in short documentary-style films.

Tasha’s story is about taking her award-winning documentary film talents and repurposing them to market an individual’s unique core. Her company works to build films that generate trust and create an emotional pull to lead consumers to take action.

My Story Inc. was just acknowledged by the Small Business Administration’s partner, SCORE, at its fourth annual SCORE Awards. The SCORE nonprofit association is designed to mentor entrepreneurs to help small businesses get off the ground, grow and achieve their goals. My Story Inc. received the award for Outstanding Woman-Owned Small Business.

Oldham first launched her production company in 2010 when the life of a filmmaker — which often consisted of worrying about getting consistent work, and then alternately working 20-hour days when she got the work—was not ideal. Her goal was to create a comfortable living using her artistic talents doing what she loved. Out of that vision, My Story Inc. came to be.

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Filed Under: Business

Why You Should Say No To Easy Money

This is a guest post from Adam Henige, a managing partner at Netvantage Marketing, an SEO and paid search management firm with offices in East Lansing and Grand Rapids, Michigan.

I started a search engine marketing company in 2008 right before the economy decided to dive head first into a toilet. I started the company with a  former co-worker where we were both senior level players within an agency that had a lot of talented people doing a lot of things, one of which was building websites. We liked doing search marketing more than any other part of our jobs and we decided that we just wanted to do that, and four years later that’s what we continue to do. It wasn’t always that easy, though. The temptation to broaden our services came early and often.

For those of you not familiar with the search marketing industry, what companies like ours do is utilize the Googles, Bings and Yahoos of the world to drive more traffic to our clients’ websites and ultimately more dollars into their pockets. Everyone wants more web traffic and more web business, but not everyone knows how to do it or who can help. When my business partner and I launched Netvantage, we didn’t take any clients from our former employer so as we sat down in our tiny office in May of 2008 the first words spoken were, “Where are all the customers?” At that point there weren’t even leads. It was time to get cracking.

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Filed Under: Management

Tips for Effective Email Cold Calling Campaign

effective email cold callingAre you considering making email cold calling your main sales strategy?

Most of the small business owners I know fear cold calling. It not only comes as a surprise but, I’d risk saying, is true with regards to most small business owners.

You didn’t start the business to talk to strangers on the phone. Most likely you either wanted to do what you love doing or, knew what your potential clients might be interested in and you could deliver it.

But now, once your new company is working, you face having to find those people somehow and telling them about you and your product or service.

The trouble is, you don’t feel comfortable enough to do it. At least not over the phone.

Luckily there is a solution and if you are reading this article, you are probably pondering about it already – cold calling via email.

Email cold calling is slowly becoming the main prospecting technique among small businesses (I believe big companies will be the last to absorb it but that’s not the point of this article anyway). And I am also sure that you have noticed that already. Not a day passes without a name you have never heard before appearing in your email inbox.

Some of these messages are spam but many are genuine businesses reaching out to you. After reading this email you will be able to do the same with, hopefully, much better result.

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Filed Under: Prospecting

How To Follow Up In Email Cold Calling

follow up in email cold callingI am sure you know how it feels.

You have tried to get in touch with a prospect for a long time. You tried to approach them at trade shows, networking events but to no avail. Most of the time, the person you tried to talk to simply wasn’t there. Finally you got their contact details from someone. Not wanting to make any mistakes, you decide to take it slow and email them first.

A week later there’s still no response from the prospect.

It’s a time for a follow-up but, you simply don’t know how to do it.

Following up is one of the most difficult elements of email cold calling. Since you have already sent them an email, to which they didn’t reply, you can’t tell what their thoughts about you and your offer might be. They may have thrashed your message straight away, or perhaps even considered it a spam. On the other hand, they may have been intrigued by your offer but they just don’t need you right now.

Needless to say, you have a tough nut to crack.

Or perhaps not.

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Filed Under: Sales

How to Write a Cold Call Email

cold call emailDo you want to start using cold call email to approach prospects?

Are you looking for an alternative to traditional cold calling?

Cold calling is certainly a thing of the past. In spite of the fact that it is still the leading sales method in large companies, small businesses move away from it at a fast pace.

What they switch towards is using cold call email. In this article I want to outline to you what email cold calling is and how you can use it in your sales.

What is cold call email

Since email cold calling is still a relatively new sales technique, there doesn’t seem to be any official definition yet. Therefore, for the purpose of this email I will resort to my own understanding of it.

In short, email cold call is, as the name suggests, email equivalent of cold calling.

In this method, instead of ringing your prospects out of the blue, you send them an email message.

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Filed Under: Prospecting

Sales Actions for a Small Business

sales actionsDo you often wonder what sales actions you should do each day?

Do you find yourself thinking what you should do each day to make sales?

Quite often during our courses and workshops participants ask me what sales actions a business owner should do everyday. Which ones are the most important ones that simply can’t be overlooked among all the other things he or she has to do each day.

Organizing sales actions into a solid daily plan is not an easy task. I am fully aware of the fact that selling is not the only thing you have to do each day. There are all the other aspects of running a business, from working on your clients projects to accounts and often keeping the office clean.

With that in mind, I decided to come up with a systematized daily sales actions plan to follow. It does not include all sales actions you need to do. What it does though, it systematize the most important ones so that they won’t get lost in your busy day.

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Filed Under: Sales, Sales Process

Selling: Product vs Skill

Sometimes it is actually your product that’s more important than your sales skills.

sales product vs. skills

Filed Under: Sales Insights

What Is a Unique Selling Proposition and How to Develop One

Unique Selling PropositionAnswering customer needs is not enough to guarantee a sale. Chances are that there are other businesses around you that offer similar solutions to the market. And therefore, your customers will need a reason to choose you over your competitors.

We call this a Unique Selling Proposition (USP).

A dictionary defines Unique Selling Proposition as “the cause or consideration presented by a seller as the reason that one product or service is different from and better than that of the competition”.

In other words, a unique selling proposition is exactly what makes one business different from another, even though they offer the same service.

Let me illustrate this by an example.

Imagine that you received a cold call from two companies offering to build you a website. At first glance they might seem identical. Both offer the same service.

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Filed Under: Sales Planning
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