Marketing Opportunities Lost When the Phone Rings
Marketing Opportunities Lost When the Phone Rings
by Debbie Allen, All Rights Reserved
When the phone rings in your business, are your employees prepared to turn the call into a solid marketing opportunity? Or are they rushing through the call, not connecting with the prospecting customers, and losing you thousands of dollars in lost revenue?
How many businesses do you call that WOW you on the phone? How many actually take the time to connect with you and use the opportunity to actually market their business more effectively. This always amazes me because most businesses spend countless dollars on advertising hoping customers will call them, but when they do, customers are often put on hold or put off?
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What To Do If Your Clients Can’t Afford Your Services
What To Do If Your Clients Can’t Afford Your Services
By online business consultant, author and expert Biana Babinsky
Has this ever happened to you? You have a new prospective customer who you know you can help. The customer is a part of your target market. She is exactly the type of person you typically work with. It looks like she will greatly benefit from your one-on-one services. You spend time answering her questions, maybe even conduct a free initial consultation. Everything looks perfect – she needs your one-on-one services, and you are looking forward to working with her. Than, when the time comes for the customer to sign on the dotted line, she tells you that even though you are exactly the person she needs to hire, she can’t afford your one-on-one fees.
If this has happened to you, you are not alone. Many service providers report spending a lot of time on prospecting, answering prospective clients’ questions and delivering no charge consultations to members of their target market who are very interested in their one-on-one services. Then, when the time comes to turn the prospect into a customer, the prospect decides he can’t afford the fees and disappears. If you can’t turn a prospect into a customer, you are not getting paid on the time you have spent with the prospect. If you are spending time with the prospects without turning them into customers, you are not getting a single cent for the time you spend with them.
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PERFECTIONISM: Where is it stifling you?
PERFECTIONISM: Where is it stifling you?
by Margie Warrell
Speaking recently at physician’s conference I asked the 100 or so people in attendance if any of them considered themselves to be a perfectionist. As you might expect from a group of doctors, there were only a few hands that were not raised into the air.
You, like many of the physicians who were seated in the audience, might be thinking “But it’s important to do the best I can and try to have things be perfect. It wouldn’t be right to lower my standards just because that was easier.”
Of course, if someone was operating on my heart, building my home or installing brakes in my car I would indeed hope that they had very high ‘perfectionist’ standards. It goes without saying that there are many many situations in which is it extremely important to have things be perfect. But it also needs to be said that there are many many situations in which in which it is not! The problem arises when we fail to discern between the two. When we fail to ask ourselves “Does this really matter?” our quest for perfection not only fails to serve us, but it’s also does a disservice to those around us and to the world at large.
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“What Are You Speaking About?”
“What Are You Speaking About?”
by James Malinchak
I often hear speakers say, “I’m going to speak on ‘X’ topic because I really enjoy that topic.” Let me tell you that it’s a BIG mistake! Let me explain by sharing a simple marketing lesson.
The number one marketing mistake in any business is to produce a product or create a service first, then try to find buyers. Smart marketers (and speakers) look to see what the market is buying BEFORE creating products/services (in your case which speaking topics the market is booking). Then, they market, market and market those speaking topics like crazy to the buyers. If the buyers already buy certain products/services (speaking topics), then doesn’t it make sense to offer the buyers what THEY WANT to buy (book), NOT what you think they want to buy (book)?
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Where the Heck is My Harvest?
Where the Heck is My Harvest?
Jane Atkinson
Where the Heck is My Harvest?
The speaking industry is somewhat similar to farming.
We plant seeds, we fertilize (some more than
others 
), we weed out the wrong clients, and
then we see the harvest.
Imagine the farmer walking out into the field the
day after planting seeds and saying “hey, where
the heck are my crops?”
Ridiculous right?
But many speakers, plant one or two seeds – or
sometimes no seeds at all – and expect the phone
to miraculously start ringing.
The speakers who have their phones ringing have
been planting seeds for years by giving speeches
(and getting spin off) and by doing marketing, or
some combination of the two.
Are you expecting a full harvest without planting
the seeds? Or would you like to increase your
harvest?
If so, here are a few steps:
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