Sales Perspective

What to do when people schedule time to meet/speak with you, yet are no-shows? Learn what to say to avoid this from happening and review a script format (found below) that will increase in-person/phone appointments kept and increase your closing percentage. The one thing you must do to avoid no-shows.       By Scott Channell It happens to all of us. We schedule a phone appointment or time to meet someone at their office and they cancel or worse yet... are no-shows. What do you do? Particularly if this happens with a decision-maker at a very desired account? A coaching client related that she had scheduled two phone appointments with a top dog... only to have them no-show on her. The objective is to close a deal. People who blow you off obviously don't "get" your value. Particularly if they don't practice common courtesy and contact you to cancel the meeting... or call you to apologize profusely for the circumstances under which they could not keep their commitment. ...

(courtesy of Duct Tape Marketing) Referrals happen, thank goodness, but for too many, they happen randomly, almost accidentally. One of the keys to tapping the systematic generation of referrals is to identify and address the customer touch points that add up to lead a customer to the logical and emotional decision that your organization is referable. I say this often, but it’s worth repeating - every person, place and thing in your business that comes into contact with a prospect or a customer is performing a marketing function. Your organization’s referability is being decided by the sum total of those contacts. It’s so important to figure out the critical stages involved in developing a customer and then fill the gaps in every contact - by fill I mean, make sure that every contact is a marketing contact - and that includes things like delivery, customer service, even billing. The 7 Stages and logical touch points along this customer referral life cycle look something like this. 1...

Imagine your board room and you're standing up front in shorts and t-shirt munching on peanuts and planning with the team for your playoff game. You're not the captain giving a fire-em-up speech. You're the new coach who has gained the team's confidence so much that they wanted you up there to show them how they can be better as a team. You need to be well-groomed for a successful presentation. Don't show up in your Saturday clothes, but feel like that. Be ready to orchestrate emotions and interest. Be ready for both laughter and boredom. To excel at putting yourself on display, you need to first consider your appearance, which includes clothing that will be common among the group and comfortable to you. Second, prepare compelling questions that promote discussion, and can elevate you as the expert in your subject. An icebreaker idea is a golden moment where all the players are recognized. You can seperate the most comfortable ones from the rest by observing who par...

Posted by: John Jantsch on Feb 20, 08 Duct Tape Marketing blog A lot of people are telling you that content is king, and to a certain degree it is, but your head is swimming and you’re thinking, “how do I create all this content and education based material when I’ve got a business to run? You say I need a blog, newsletter, white papers, podcast, training courses, instructional videos, I mean, how do I get it all done?” Yes you do need all that stuff and, yes, it’s a lot of work, so the trick is to find ways to take content you absolutely need to create and find ways to repurpose it. And, take content you’ve already produced and give it new life, new audiences. -If you are doing an online demo, record it and put it on your website. -If you get the same questions over and over again, answer them all in an audio format. -Take those same questions and turn them into blog posts -Take several blog posts and stitch them together into an article to submit online and off -Create a series of 7 ...