GlobalBX Entrepreneur Business Articles - October 2009How to Avoid Business Opportunity Scams – Don’t be a Victim!If It’s Too Good To Be True – It Is Most Likely a Scam Opportunities are everywhere for people who are anxious to go into business for themselves. With the recent economic downturn causing more and more people to lose their jobs, interest is at an all-time high to go into business on one’s own. […] Qualifying QuestionsQualifying your customer is the process of determining their interest in your value proposition, their budget and their decision-making process. Do they have the Money, Authority and Desire (MAD)? They are not fully qualified unless they have all three. One of the ways you can determine if they are MAD is simply to ask. Here […] Have You Taken Action On Your Marketing Yet?I had an interesting conversation with someone the other day about our newsletters. He said he received them and I asked him whether he found them useful. He said he did, but mentioned that 70% of what I included, he already knew. Good point, I thought – but often it’s not about what you […] Vast Numbers Of Sales People Sound Like Achievers In The Office … But Become Deceivers In The Market!I was once asked by a speaker agency to run a focus group meeting with their clients. One of the key points made at the meeting was that most of the clients were tired of meeting speakers (recommended by the agency) who were ‘interesting to talk to in person’ at the briefing, and then ‘awful […] Sales Can Only Be Made When You Reach The 3rd And 4th “Customer Columns”I ‘touched’ on this issue in an article not long ago, and since then I have developed the line of thought far more, because the topic is critical to sales success. Let us imagine that every sales presentation made, small and large, including conference speeches…always ‘lands’ in one of four columns as perceived by customers […] Customers And Prospects Prefer To Be Told In a Nice Way, Not Sold In Any Way!If you become the client of a ‘professional’, such as an architect, an engineer or a doctor, you probably welcome being told what is best for you…providing of course that the ‘telling’ is done in a pleasant way, and with good intentions. We expect such people to ‘down-sell’, not ‘up-sell’, and remember we do not […] The Incredible Selling Power Of ‘The Silent Promise’Every business, large or small, and every individual in sales, operates by a purpose…and only three forms of purpose are available: The 1st purpose: To be pleased by customers means that although you probably have a positive work and service ethic…your main focus and talking point inside the company is about your budgets, your results, […] To Create a Positive “Economic Outlook” For 2009, Learn To “Look Out” At The Market To See Serious Sales PotentialThere is no doubt that we are in a recession and so this is a time for using our brains, not for ‘bracing’ ourselves for what might happen…or for indulging in the kind of ‘bravado’ that involves mindless expressions such as ‘what recession?’ The best way to face a recession is to imagine that it […] To Succeed In Business, In The Sense Of Advancement, Earnings And Enjoyment … You Must Avoid Being a Walking Contradiction!Let me give some examples of ‘walking contradictions’. If you look closely at the lives of most people in the building and related trades, they are usually involved in intricate and exacting work…and yet their service behaviour is often disastrous and anything but thorough. This is an enormous contradiction and one that is experienced and […] Sometimes, Where There’s a Way … There’s a Will!From an early age we are taught that almost everything worth knowing has already been thought through, which suggests that we should accept ‘past thoughts’ and move into the future accordingly. No doubt you remember from school that ‘i comes before e, except after c’…so where does that leave words like seizure and leisure? See […] The Advice You Can Rely On To Improve Sales: Try Ardour!As a business pursuit, the selling process has been complicated beyond belief, to the point where many people have been deceived into thinking that all the ‘answers are buried under rocks in the middle of the outback. They are not; in fact the answers to selling success are on full view just about every day, […] Here Is The Principal Reason Why Most People Fail At “Making Sales”Here is a brief hypothetical to lead into the topic of this article: you find yourself ‘having no choice’ but to deliver a half hour presentation to an audience of 100 people, and you know that if the presentation goes well it will mean a lot to your company, and to you too. So as […] You Will Be The Same In 5 Years As You Are Today, Except For Two Things: The People You Meet And The Items You ReadI once brought a particularly gifted speaker to Australia and New Zealand, to address our staff and customers…and I recall him saying this to me: ‘John, if I wanted to know anything about you I would just go to your bookcase, and then I would see who your heroes are, what business issues you consider […] “The War Of The Worlds” Novel In 1898 Was Science Fiction, But Today In Business The Battle Is Real And Unabated … And Rarely Debated!In business, the ‘worlds’ include suppliers, their sales people, their internal divisions, their customers, their customers’ customers and the staff of their customers. The reference to ‘war’ relates to the various ‘worlds’ being at odds with each other, to the point of becoming enemies and doing harm to each other. For example… • The staff […] The Measure Of Your Success Is Influenced By What You MeasureWhen I ran the marketing and sales operations for the Schwarzkopf organization, I often ran focus group sessions for individual salons, involving just a few of their clients…with salon staff present too. At these meetings we would discuss how clients felt about 1. Receiving styling ideas from staff, 2. Being given product recommendations for home […] The “Spectrum Of Selling” From The Point Of Access To Success!No one in selling wants to fail, and indeed I am sure that everyone in sales wants to ‘do well’. If this is true, then we need to remember and clearly understand the saying ‘success begets success’…which simply means that the only way to achieve success is to sell success. Sadly, a very small percentage […] In Selling, When The Student Is Ready To Learn … The Teacher Is Never Far Away!The most effective women and men in selling that I have met, somehow just keep getting better…even though they are already held in very high esteem by both customers and management. These people do not find business to be easy, in fact the opposite is true; they see the challenges of attracting, serving and selling […] In Your Selling & Advertising Efforts … If You Don’t Start At The End, You’ll Be Finished At The Beginning!Using food as an example, there are perhaps four ways to influence diners with meal offerings, and in descending order they are as follows: 1. tasting the food being offered, 2. seeing a photo of the meal, 3. glancing over a menu description of the meal, 4. studying a recipe relating to the meal. None […] When It Comes To Setting Traps To Win New Customers … Be Sure To Snare With FlairWhen you think about it, aiming to attract new customers is very much like setting a trap for a mouse or a larger creature. The difference of course is that our trap should be a positive one, offering help, not harm…however the bait we use must be as enticing to a prospect as cheese is […] People That Use Small Talk Never Make Big SalesThe message in this article is aimed at both sales people and anyone in business that deals with and buys from sales people on a regular basis. You will surely have met sales people that feel the need to ingratiate themselves with potential customers by using small talk. In many cases the over-use of small […] |
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