Advertising with USB Sticks

The small price and their popularity are points, why the USB Stick becomes famous as a giveaway. Theres also the possibility of printing the USB Flash Drive with advertising or save the congruent promotion material on it. Ist even possible to now allow the deleting of your information. Its important that not the whole stick is full with your advertisement, to use the stick as a normal storage. But so everyone plugging the stick can read the promotion material.

Amongst the greatest inexpensive digital cameras is the Kodak-EasyShare-M763 which costs about $190. This beginner’s camera has an amazing resolution of 10 MP along with a 5x ‘optical’ zoom. This camera has a 3.5 inch LCD and viewfinder along with a CCD .3″ photo sensor. This camera could capture extremely sharp close-up pictures. With beginners in mind, this camera has a category for each mode for the assistance of the consumer, as he could rotate the button for the desired ’screen-selection’. dcmeuk2

Polaroid-i1036 is one more cheap digital camera which comes with a significant functions list for its inexpensive price of under $100. You are given alternatives of choosing this camera in a range of ‘colors’, and the price-tag is surely something that seems great. Along with a 6 MP resolution, 3.4x optical zoom and a 3″ viewfinder, this camera is a great offering at a price that scarcely causes troubles with the finances.

The Sony-CyberShot-DSC-W55 costing around $200 is amongst the finest low-cost digital cameras available. There are certain unique features which are known as magic-filters for extraordinary artistic special effects on the images including a ‘fish-eye’ view. This camera’s zoom aspect does work rather well, again considering the price of the camera. The same can also be said about the camera’s resolution. The solitary hiccup is that you may not be able to open photographs taken through changed resolution standards.

The ‘hazardous waste boom’ in the 80’s and the increasing need for infrastructure in growing economies led to more entrants to the market and increasing, more efficient competition in consulting engineering.

As competitive pressures increased, hourly rates for services were forced downward. The multiplier of raw salary to billing rates continued to free fall from numbers on the order of 3.5 in the late 70’s, to the high two’s in the 80’s, to the present range which is on the order of 2.5 or less. The net result of falling rates has been increasing pressure to keep billability high and overhead low.

The largest firms (those with over 1,000 employees) can do more with lower overhead because of efficiencies gained from having the same internal services distributed over larger numbers of employees and gross revenue. Mid-sized firms (those with 500 employees or so) still need internal services such as dedicated senior management, human resources, marketing, accounting, etc. but must distribute these costs over lower revenue. Very little overhead money is left for people dedicated full time to developing new business. To control overhead, almost everyone has to be billable.

Given this situation, it’s become increasingly necessary for technical staff – otherwise billable scientists and engineers – to develop new business. Unfortunately, scientists and engineers seldom see themselves as ’salespeople’ and are seldom trained and coached in business development skills. Their daily routine is not geared to visiting potential clients they’ve never met – and they are usually very uncomfortable doing this. So, it doesn’t happen.

What can be done? How can mid-sized consulting engineering firms give their technical staff the skills necessary to become effective ’seller / doers’? Even more important, how can scientists and engineers be motivated to make business development a key part of their professional life?

Our work at MBDi, where we specialize in teaching scientists and engineers to sell technical services, has shown that several factors are critical. Most of the problems that people have in business development can be characterized as either ‘mechanical’ (they don’t know what to do) or ‘conceptual’ (they know what to do, but they won’t do it). In our experience, the vast majority of people (60%) that fail in the role of business development fail because they cannot overcome conceptual problems. Because of this, we find that it’s important to work on these ‘conceptual’ problems first.

The first task is enabling technical people to understand that building a professional practice is the key to their success in consulting. We can give them all the business development skills they’ll need, but if they don’t believe in it, they won’t do it.

The first thing that scientists and engineers must understand is that as ‘professionals’ it’s necessary for them to develop a ‘professional practice’ like the other professions – attorneys and physicians, for example.

Second, developing a professional practice gives them the ability to manage their own destiny. They will be able to ‘take care of themselves’ rather than putting their future in someone else’s hands.

Third, the key to security in a mid-sized consulting business is the ability to bring in new business. Unpaid work that may be required is an investment in one’s self and in one’s security.

Finally, and probably most important, is that business development is ethical. Their purpose in business development is to help their clients get the services they need – they should never have to ‘push’ anything that won’t help their clients.

Engineers and scientists must truly believe in these principles or they won’t choose to take on the role of business development. If they accept this, training can begin.

Once past the ‘Conceptual Problems’ we can start working on the four ‘cornerstone’ competencies that are essential for success in business development: Technical Knowledge, Money Knowledge, Business Knowledge and People Knowledge.

• Technical Knowledge is understanding the problems that the services we offer can solve for our clients. It is the ability to translate what we provide into the specific issues and concerns that the client has.

• Money Knowledge is understanding how your client makes money, how their business develops a profit, and the issues that affect that profitability.

• Business Knowledge is understanding your client’s business as well as understanding your client’s customers’ business. It is knowing their business strategically and tactically from their perspective.

• People Knowledge, in addition to understanding ourselves, is organizational and client knowledge, understanding why the organization is structured the way it, assessing the leadership capability of the individuals and understanding the issues that drive the behavior of those in a leadership position.

In our experience, the least understood of these cornerstone competencies is ‘People Knowledge’, but it’s essential for success. It’s much more important to know how and why clients buy services than to learn how to sell services. So, it’s important to train people in the ‘psychology of the sale’.

We believe that it’s the one who best understands a client’s problems from the client’s perspective who will win the business. Therefore we also concentrate our training efforts in the skills necessary to elicit, completely understand and develop clients’ problems.

Because it’s important to control overhead, it’s critical to qualify prospective clients. Those who don’t have problems that your firm can solve don’t need your services. The sooner you can find that out, the less expensive it will be – so, qualify ‘early and often’. If a client can’t convince you that he has a problem, you shouldn’t try to convince them that you have a solution.

Young engineers and scientists in a consulting company have lots of opportunities to practice these skills before they try face-to-face cold calls. As they develop professionally, they should be getting an understanding that it’s up to them to keep themselves billable – at first through developing their practice internally. Understanding whom in the firm needs their skills and joining these teams will keep them billable.

As their careers progress, technical staff often begin managing projects. For many, this is their first client contact and the first real opportunity to develop new business for the firm. Nevertheless, it’s surprising that even though Project Managers are sometimes on site and have frequent contact with clients, they often don’t develop any new business. In most cases, this is because they work ‘with blinders on’ thinking that ’sales’ is someone else’s job. Often, they don’t have the imagination to see a client’s problems that their firm could solve. Obviously, their first priority must be to deliver high quality service, bringing in the project on time and on budget. With training and coaching, however, they can be taught to develop any firm’s most important source of new revenue – repeat business.

Finally, as they reach senior level, scientists and engineers must learn to develop new business with new clientsones that they have never met – while they maintain some billability. We find that in many cases this is a half-hearted effort at best. It’s often reactive, not proactive. Answering the mail. Bidding. Finding ‘opportunities’ by reading Commerce Business Daily. Anything and everything — but not frequent, effective business development calls that qualify clients and proactively identify problems and develop them in a way that results in new business.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. With effective training and coaching in the necessary conceptual and mechanical skills, scientists and engineers can become highly ‘effective seller / doers’. But senior management has to make the commitment to give their staff these skills.

www.mbdi.com

I’ve developed a rule of thumb in my business consulting that has helped me identify one of the big problems my clients frequently have. The rule goes this way:

If there are

• two different groups responsible for lead generation and sales, and
  • if marketing success (advertising, lead generation) seems extraordinarily high,
  • while the sales close ratio is way down (maybe 1 in 10)
    then the chances are that the marketing and lead generation efforts are not qualifying the leads.

  Then the target has been to get the most people through the door instead of the most qualified people.

One of my sales trainees ended up with an extremely high cold calling response rate. It was nearly 90% of every live person she could reach. She was convincing nearly everyone she could actually talk to to explore the next steps.

She had convinced one of the other companies in the class to hire her to do their telemarketing. The result of her telemarketing was that she was bringing in a flood of leads to their sales department. The problem was that the sales department was not able to close many of these leads.

She could generate lots of leads. She could generate a lot of interest but she had failed to qualify these people, to make sure that they could and would be able to buy.

On one hand it proved that what we had been doing in the sales training worked as she was able to generate so much interest. On the other, she was abusing the influencing skills she had developed in our class, and wasn’t qualifying the people before passing the lead on to sales.

Let me give you another rule of thumb I use. The sales process usually is more labor intensive than the marketing and lead generation process. If the leads aren’t being qualified in the marketing step then a lot of time is wasted in the sales process talking to unqualified people. The sales response rates will drop and not really indicate the true sales success.

If a sales person is talking to a qualified prospect his sales close ratio should be in the 40-50%, or even higher, range. However, if he is fed leads that aren’t qualified, he is having to qualify leads that should have been qualified by the marketing and lead generation process and taking a lot of valuable sales time. Now his sales success will go through the floor.

So, if you see a high marketing, lead generation success and low sales success look into the fact that they might be receiving unqualified leads as a potential cause before accusing sales of being failures or before providing training to the sales department.

If, as is frequently the case, the sales department is also responsible for generating their own leads, I’ve frequently seen sales people that are excellent at lead generation but couldn’t close a deal if their job depended on it, and it does. I’ve also seen excellent closers that couldn’t find a lead with both hands. Evaluate your sales team by assessing these two separate skills. They are, indeed, two separate skills and frequently not at the same skill level in your sales people.

Alan Boyer, President/CEO of The Leader’s Perspective, LLC is considered one of the world’s leading sales trainers & breakthrough specialists. He has worked with some of the worlds largest companies, on projects in the multi-billion dollar area, and with single proprietor companies. He has worked on many hundreds of projects with companies that have resulted in multi-$100 million savings or gains.
With over 35 years of business, and sales experience, he has catapulted businesses lightyears ahead in weeks. Some have doubled and some have jumped 10 times. He claims the key to that is:

• Helping them overcome the limitations and attitudes that they built between their ears (the self imposed limitations, I can’t, this won’t work for me, I’m different)
• By helping them find the breakthroughs in their business and thinking

He helps companies worldwide reach further than they EVER thought possible….FASTER

http://www.leaders-perspective.com/sales-training.aspx

mailto:AlanBoyer@leaders-perspective.com

The process is quite simple.
They craft a targeted letter with a powerful offer and post it on a web page. However, somehow they do not achieve the success they desire.

Why?
Why is it that intelligent, motivated, hard-working individuals are not achieving the success they deserve? It is because they don’t know to sell white space.

They pay all attention to sales letter vital elements:

1. The Headline.
   They create a power headline to get the reader’s immediate attention and create curiosity.

2. The Body.
   (presentation of products characteristics)
   They create interest and desire through answering the question “what’s in it for me?”.

3. The Sub-Headlines.
   A sub-headline is an one line statement containing a powerful benefit of product. Headlines are very important because they make sales letter better structured and charge up the reader.

4. The Irresistible Offer.
   They always offer a strong risk-free guarantee and give a free bonus together with the product.

5. The Invitation to Order.
   Always they finish the sales letter with asking for prospects to order NOW!

They do not forget that sales research has shown that over 90% of the sales process is based on having a good rapport with the prospect. They build trust and have the best coverage for the client. They write short and use direct statements that cut right to the heart of the matter, making everything as simple and direct as they possibly can.

But sometimes they forget to make letter easy to read.
Following the desire to offer a full presentation of the product they often put too much inside, line after line. Nothing kills more sales than a full solid page of type and the result is a boring letter that people will not read it.

The solution is to offer a pleasure to customer’s eye using white space accordingly. The easier it is to read your letter or web page the more money you make.

Don’t torture your potential customer. Make you letter as “aired” as you can and you will make the most money just selling white space.

Valerian Dinca is the owner of the newest online business tutorial. Everything you need when you need it.

“There’s a born salesman!” I have yet to read, or hear on the evening news, of a lady who gave birth to a sales person. Or an attorney, or doctor, or for that matter an embezzler or swindler. Birth is given to boys and girls; everything after that is by choices made and skills that are learned. And sales skills are life skills.

“I am not ever going to be in sales!” Really? If you have ever been in a conversation in which you were trying to express an opinion or influence an event, then you were selling. The truth is that everyone is constantly trying to sell an idea, belief, proposition, opinion, or a goal. You use sales skills throughout the day, everyday. With your spouse, your kids, your peers, your neighbor, your parents, at the store, at the bank, at your church, when you buy a car or a house, or when you simply go out to dinner. Sales skills are life skills.

There is not an area of your life where sales skills cannot be a benefit. Teachers use sales skills. Preachers use sales skills. Police officers use sales skills. Mother Teresa used sales skills. Regardless of what you do, sales skills will improve your probability for success at motivating, instructing, encouraging, coaching, communicating with and reaching people. Sales skills are life skills.

In fact, every successful person is good at selling himself or herself.

Truly successful sales people have great listening skills. (Although my wife often questions mine!) Unfortunately, the image of a good sales person is a slick talking person who could sell ice to an Eskimo. However, just the opposite is true. The professional sales person wouldn’t sell ice to an Eskimo unless that ice was wanted and needed. And that would be determined through a series of questions and keen listening to determine the need. In fact, a true professional sales person will listen over three times as much as they will talk! (Again, my wife may disagree but it is true!) Sales skills are life skills.

There is not a single person in an organization that does not have an opportunity to sell for their organization. It is for that reason that I believe everyone in an organization should receive some training in sales skills. It takes very few positive results to more than pay for the investment! Think about the tremendous upside. Not only do you dramatically increase the potential of your sales force, but your employee’s confidence, attitude, and motivation greatly increases. Sales skills are life skills.

How to ask questions, listen intently, clarify a position or opinion, present a view, deal with objections, and reach a successful conclusion for all involved is the art of sales. What is there not to like and which of those skills do you not want to get better at and use throughout your daily life?

Have I mentioned that sales skills are life skills?

Shawn Lacagnina, of Smoothstone Consulting, helps people understand how to work more effectively together through consulting, training, coaching, and public speaking. His passion is sharing real world skills that not only affect the bottom line of organizations, but change people’s lives. Prior to Smoothstone, Shawn was the CEO of Triad USA Marketing Group, Inc. for over eleven years.

Some of your personal objectives will be financially based, others will require a change in lifestyle or available leisure time. For example, one of your personal goals might be to purchase a new home. To attain that goal, you will have a monthly goal equal to the monthly payment. Another objective may be to spend more time with a hobby, which requires flexibility of time.

The first step is to write down the things you need to spend money on every month. Start with the basic items, such as your rent or mortgage, utilities, food, entertainment, clothing, credit card and loan payments, car payments, insurance, and so on. If your objectives include a more expensive home or car, write in the higher amount. If you would like to reduce or eliminate debt, increase the monthly amount you will pay on credit cards and other loans so that they can be reduced or eliminated within the time frame you set. In addition to the basic items, try to write down five to ten things that you would really like to do, see, experience, or have. Include travel and vacations, hobbies and interests, competitions, sports, music, writing, and other such items. Other things that may inspire you could include donations to your church and/or charities, spending more time with loved ones, or volunteering your time in any number of worthwhile and rewarding ways. Try to break everything down to a monthly cost. For example, if one of your objectives is to take a yearly all-inclusive family vacation at a cost of $5,000, your monthly cost for this item is just over $400.

Once you have written down everything you want to have and achieve and it’s corresponding monthly cost, you can identify your monthly net income objective. If you haven’t already, now would be a good time to include an objective of setting aside some of your income for investments. Your investment advisor can help you determine the appropriate percentage. Next, include a “buffer” of around 5 percent to cover miscellaneous items and minor things you have not considered. Finally, take your monthly net income objective and add enough to cover your personal taxes. The final number is your monthly Personal Income Objective (PIO).

Congratulations you have just made your first and most important move toward becoming a winner. You are one step closer to joining the Top 20 percent! It is important to keep your goals in front of you as often as possible. A fun way to do this is to create a collage of photos, messages, and so on that remind you of what is important to you. Make a large one to hang on your wall. Make a small one that you can insert in your planner or portfolio. If you find yourself out in the field thinking about “dropping the ball,” reach for your objectives and let them inspire you to keep going!

As with everything, things will change in your life and career. You can and should reset your short-term goals when you need to. Sometimes they will get bigger and sometimes smaller. If you find that your goals are currently completely out of reach, don’t hesitate to reduce them to an attainable level. Just make sure you are always stretching to achieve more until you get where you really want to be!

Since 1985, Don Mastrangelo has built dozens of highly successful sales armies for well-known organizations such as Harte-Hanks Direct Marketing, AlphaGraphics, and Trimble Navigation as well as building sales armies for his own entrepreneurial companies in fields ranging from newspaper publishing, telecommunications, printing, advertising, residential construction and land development. Don has shared his Ready, Set, Sell! sales methodology with notable firms such as Gannett, Nextel, Salesforce.com, several network marketing companies and many other organizations. He was selected as a Salesforce.com “Hero” for implementation and has been a regular presenter at the Salesforce.com “DreamForce” annual convention. His book “Ready, Set, Sell! – How to Get From ZERO to Sales HERO in 90 Days” has been endorsed by some of the sales industry’s top authors, including Brian Tracy (author of The Psychology of Selling) and Jeffrey Gitomer (author of The Sales Bible and The Little Red Book of Selling). Don can be reached at (800) 688-0999, info@donmastrangelo.com or http://www.readysetsell.biz

If it almost seems that the textbook ’selling process’ is only a small part of a bigger picture, you’re absolutely right. It’s madness. Coping with life demands outside of work and keeping a balance of home and work. It’s madness. Customer problems and complaints. Issues that have to be fixed right now…if not yesterday! There’s little leniency. It’s madness.

I think you see now the real, low-down ultimate secret to success in sales. It’s managing the madness. The person who can wrap their arms around the bigger issues and keep them together will find incredible success. The salesperson who can deliver outstanding customer service while consistently building new business while supporting the support staff and keeping their home life in line will find and incredibly rewarding career.
In every workday, there are revenue-generating tasks, revenue maintenance tasks and time wasting tasks.

I had a rather lengthy phone conversation with a man who was getting frustrated with his middle-of-the-pack status in his company. I let him talk through all the usual excuses…the economy, bad territory, high prices (heck, I feel that I made up most of them myself, and should get royalties every time they’re used by someone else!).

Then he brought up one more: time. “My manager wants me to both sell and service! They’re both full-time jobs! How can I be expected to do both?”

We’re most profitable to ourselves (and our company) we’re eyeball-to-eyeball with people who pay our bills.

I talk a lot about the importance of time management but, here in the real world, it’s just not that plain and simple. Stuff happens. Fires start. And interruptions? You know the drill. There’s always someone who needs a piece of your time….right away!

The inside staff. We want (no, make that demand) that the company’s support staff think, feel, breath and work as hard as we do….to be as committed to the customer as we are. They’re not necessarily going to share it. That’s not a criticism, just a fact of life.

That’s why it’s more important than ever for us to be great at managing the madness. Planning the Good Stuff, being on the lookout for Time Bandits (which EVERY company has) and having an Action Plan for keeping the revenue-generating activity first and foremost, no matter what.

Take a hard, cold look at daily activities. We must give awesome service to our current customers. BUT….low levels of future business development will eventually put you out of business. Be creative. Know when and how to delegate. Do what only you can do, first. Using technology to stay in touch and as a part of your customer service mix

The madness of the demands on your time that will sometimes stretch into the evening hours (heck, once in a while, all night!), the madness of answering the bell every day, that means up in time, more than just a cup o’ Jo for breakfast and leaving for the office before the absolute last minute. The madness of

This certainly does not mean let’s all pity the poor salesperson. Every job has taken on new dynamics. Fewer jobs are ‘permanent.’ More and more workers find that their job is there as long as the role they fill is needed and, when it’s gone, so are they. That’s the cold reality.

One of America’s hottest sales trainers, Joe Guertin has 25 years of outside sales experience, specializing in new business and customer relationship development. As a sought-after speaker, and consultant, Joe has worked with thousands of salespeople, managers and business principals, targeting specific areas of development, including internal sales systems, customer development strategies and team skill-building. His firm, The Guertin Group, conducts customized corporate sales training, both live and online.

Visit The Guertin Group at http://www.guertingroup.com to receive his monthly ezine newsletter. Joe can be reached at 414-762-2450, or joe@guertingroup.com