The best sales presentation I’ve ever seen wasn’t a sales pitch, but when it was over I was sold for life.

Wouldn’t you like to be able to do the same with your marketing, sell clients for life without a single sales pitch?

I was in high school, attending a mandatory assembly about safe driving. We students were polite, but mostly inattentive until we saw the speaker toss an egg to a volunteer on the stage. By the time we heard “splat!” and saw the egg dripping from his hand, the speaker had our attention.

“That egg is you in a car crash, without a seat belt,” the speaker said. “Its simple physics: when a fragile object in motion stops suddenly, the energy has to go somewhere.”

“Now, let’s see what happens when we protect the egg,” he said, placing another in an empty dozen-size carton. The speaker flung the carton half way back into the auditorium, where a student caught it. On instruction from the speaker he opened the carton, removed the unbroken egg and held it aloft.

We were sold. The benefits of wearing a seat belt were etched permanently on our brains, as my recollection of the moment many years later attests.

Want to sell more of your prospects? Get started here >>

Everybody’s selling something…

The speaker may have been throwing, but he wasn’t pitching. As the egg story shows, there’s more than one-way to sell.

Think you don’t have to sell? Think again.

Everybody sells something - products, services or ideas. The speaker was selling an idea, and we bought it because of the power of his demonstration.

Good selling isn’t about high pressure and fast talk. It’s about providing information that enables buyers to make informed decisions. It’s about presenting  ideas in a way that grab their attention, eliminate their objections and demonstrate value. A canned sales pitch is seldom the best way to do that. In other words, you can win without pitching.

Interested? Want to know the secrets to winning without pitching? Start by using this link >>

That being the case, you need to know how to go about communicating with your prospects and clients. First, it helps to start thinking like your clients.  Here are four basic guidelines to help you market from your client’s perspective:

*No one likes to be sold, but nearly everyone loves to buy.

*People do things for their own reasons, not yours.

*People buy from you because they know you, like you and trust you.

*People make buying decisions based on emotions, not facts.

With those thoughts as a frame of reference, let’s consider what you should do to help people buy. These suggestions apply to on-line and off-line businesses equally.

*Be a problem solver. Establish your expert credentials by providing high-quality information that helps people solve their problems.

*Use stories and testimonials. People love stories. They help us understand context and let us relate better to a product or service.  Testimonials are short stories told about you by your clients. Prospective clients often find  it easier to relate to you through the positive experiences of others.

*Be patient. Selling is a lot like dating (yes, we’re all selling something). You wouldn’t think of planting a passionate kiss on someone at the beginning of a first date. It makes no more sense to try to close a product sale too soon. Provide information, build trust.

*Tell the truth and nothing but the truth. Keep in mind a quick search of the Internet probably will provide more than enough factual information to debunk any false claims.

*Use a variety of tools. We’ve already discussed the power of a good demonstration. It doesn’t have to be live - you can do a video demo on YouTube or your own Website. No matter what kind of business you have, a good Website should be a big part of your marketing mix.

Providing useful information helps customers gain confidence in you, which is essential to establishing trust. But at some point you have to close the sale. If you’ve provided good information that leads the customer logically from information consumer to eager buyer, closing the sale should be the natural end result.

If you’d like to attract more clients and generate more sales, discover how much more you could be making by winning without pitching. Take action today >>

To your success,

Charlie

Many small business owners, entrepreneurs and marketers struggle to be more profitable and overlook simple, effective strategies that could increase their sales by as much as 200%.

Are you one of them? Have you overlooked these marketing opportunities, too?

• Do you have a list of satisfied clients but you’re having trouble increasing your sales?
• Do you send out mailings and get a miniscule rate of return?
• Do you run ads and expect a landslide of new business?
• Do you have a web site that barely pays for itself?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’re burning up time and money stretching and straining to increase sales and missing the low-hanging profits you could be taking in.

Have you been to one of those Pick-Your-Own orchards? It’s an annual fall excursion in my family. Each year we drive to our favorite orchard in Monkton, Vermont and pick a few pecks of apples for eating and baking.

If you’ve picked your own apples, you know that it’s a lot easier to grab the ones hanging on the lower branches. The wooden ladders that reach to the top of the trees are heavy, awkward, and never nearby when you need them. Once you’ve located a ladder and wrestled it into position, you’ve got to scramble up without damaging yourself or the brittle branches of the tree.

You can pick five times as many apples in the same amount of time by moving from tree to tree and grabbing the ones within reach. Likewise, there is profit potential within reach if you know how to take advantage of it.

Discover the easiest way to pick up more profits with your business. >>

Small Changes Add Up to Big Profits
Recently my VW dealer sent me an email detailing 4 ways to improve my mileage by 20%; replace filters, change the oil, tune the engine and keep the tires properly inflated. Each is a small, low cost change but making them could add up to significant savings. You can improve sales with similar low cost changes in your marketing and have a big impact on profits.

Here are seven small changes that can yield big results:

1. Replace your marketing message; Increase sales by 20% to 3,000%.
2. Use an automated lead generation system to target your best prospects; Increase sales by 100% to 1,000%.
3. Change your pricing strategy; Increase profits by 20% to 65%.
4. Replace your sales script; Increase closing rates and sales by 50% to 80%
5. Change your sales page headline; Increase your income by 50% to 150%.
6. Include related up-sell offers; Increase profits by 12% to 25%.
7. Use every page on your website to generate leads, instead of just one or two pages; Increase your sales by 15% to 40%.

Ready to discover how and where to increase your profits? Find the easy answers >>

The solution to making more with your business isn’t to look for a magic marketing pill that will solve all your problems instantly. It doesn’t exist. The solution is to pick the low hanging fruit to get 10% and 20% and bigger improvements.

How to Increase Sales by 300%
If you could find a way to increase your profits by 10% every month, you would have more than tripled your income by the end of the year. Harvesting low-hanging profits can do that for your business. Like plucking the apples at arm’s length in an orchard, it’s less work and a whole lot more fruitful.

Interested in harvesting low-hanging profits to grow your sales and your business? Discover how >>

- Charlie

Marketing Ideas that Make YOU Money

P.S. Add a few thousand dollars here and a few there each month and within a few months you’ll be on your way to making an additional $100,000 to $300,000 or more this year.

Are your marketing habits good for your business?

Bill is a friend of mine who is smart, hard working and dedicated to his management consulting business. His clients love him, but his business is stagnating. He gets referrals occasionally, but considering how good he is at what he does, new clients should be lined up outside his door.

When business slows down and his client list shrinks, Bill blames it on a lack of interest in the marketplace. What’s Bill missing?

He doesn’t have good marketing habits. Actually, he doesn’t have any marketing habits.

Marketing is like your health. If you want to see your business continue to increase its profits year after year you need to have healthy marketing habits.

If you eat three meals a day, get exercise, take some time to relax, brush your teeth and get 7-8 hours of sleep. You have reasonably good health habits. Maybe a few more vegetables instead of cookies, more exercise and some more sleep would help but basically you’re doing the right things to keep yourself in decent shape.

Want to do the same with your marketing to get it in shape?

Ready to discover the simple marketing regimen that can make you rich? Use this link >>

Every day you do at least 4 to 7 tasks to keep your body fueled and functioning well. You eat more or less balanced meals, get a little exercise, brush your teeth, sleep. etc.

But are you doing the 4 to 7 things you need to do every day to keep your business fueled with a steady stream of new clients and profits? If not, don’t panic, but don’t shrug this advice off either. It’s time to adopt healthy marketing habits.

The 3 Most Important Wealth-Building Marketing Habits

1. Take Responsibility for Your Marketing Strategy
Puzzled by what to do to grow your business? You need a proven marketing strategy that’s right for your business.

If you’re serious about growth, it’s time to find out what really works to generate more clients and sales. Use this link to get the details >>

Thinking of hiring a marketing firm to do it all for you? It doesn’t quite work that way. I can’t tell you how many business owners I’ve heard from who’ve hired marketing firms and seen little or no increase in sales. Even if you hire a firm to implement your marketing, you’ve still got to take responsibility for understanding what it takes to develop and maintain a winning marketing strategy.

You may have hired a personal trainer to guide your fitness routine and a full time cook to make delicious, nutritious meals (lucky you!); your health is still your responsibility. The same is true of your company’s marketing.

Discover what works to generate more clients and sales. Use this link to get the details >>

2. Schedule Time For Marketing
If they aren’t locked into your schedule, you won’t get to your marketing tasks and you won’t ever see your marketing strategy kick into gear.

You eat regular meals to keep yourself thriving; likewise - establish regular times to nourish your business by focusing on your marketing. I schedule a morning a week to write newsletters and manage the various on- and off-line tasks that keep traffic coming to my website and convert prospects to clients.

If you haven’t done so already, block out time each day or each week to spend on marketing - a minimum of five hours a week.

3. Use a Proven Marketing Strategy
Most business owners and marketers make the following mistake. They spend money on advertising and then sit back and wait for results. Or they put up a web site and sit back and wonder why so few people are buying from it.

If you wanted to grow your favorite variety of tomatoes, you wouldn’t just throw a handful of seeds onto a patch of soil and expect them to thrive. You’d water and weed and pinch them back and check their progress at least once a week.

In marketing as in gardening, a simple strategy will help those leads turn into clients and you’ll have healthy profits. Without a proven marketing strategy you’ll just end up wasting your time and money.

Ready to discover a proven marketing strategy to grow your business? Use this link to get the details >>

Charlie
Marketing Ideas That Make You Money

This is one small businesss marketing question that always suprises me because I think the answer is so obvious but, well, obviously its not.

Imagine you lived in Houston and wanted to travel to New York. If you take the wrong road, one headed, let’s say, towards Las Vegas, you’re not going to make it to New York, no matter how hard you try.

If you’re on the wrong road with your marketing its not going to all of a sudden get you where you want to go. It’s just going to keep taking you further away from your destination, costing you in time and money.

Just like most men don’t like asking for directions when they are lost, most people resist getting advice from a marketing expert. They want to keep doing it on their own in hopes of a miracle. Are you waiting for a marketing miracle?

If you’re marketing isn’t getting where you want to go, wouldn’t you agree that the smartest thing to do is to stop what you are doing and get advice from someone knows the answers and who can point you in the right direction? Makes sense doesn’t it?

When you know how to market yourself and your business, you’ll actually spend the same or less time and money on marketing. The big difference is that you’ll see results from your efforts. Instead of generating one or two leads you’ll generate ten, twenty or a hundred and you’ll convert more of these into sales and cash you can put in the bank.

Want to spend less and make more? You can! Use this link to discover the secrets to small business marketing that attracts clients and helps you grow your business.
- Charlie Cook

“What percent of my budget should I spend in advertising and marketing my business?”
John
CallFinalPick

The percent of your budget you spend on marketing will vary depend on a number of variables. If you’ve just started your business, plan on spending 20-30% of your net revenues on marketing. Some new firms spend even more, 50-70% in an effort to build up their customer base. If your revenue target for your first or second year in business is $200,000 you should plan on spending between $40,000 to $60,000 on marketing.

If you’ve been in business for a number of years and already have an existing client base and want to keep growing you’ll need to spend 1-15% of your net revenues on marketing. Let’s say you’ve been in business for ten years and want to earn $300,000 in 2005, depending on your business you should plan on spending from $3,000 to $45,000 dollars on marketing. - Charlie Cook

2004 was my first full year in business (started 04/2003) and I ended up with a total of $223,000 of commission income for my insurance agency. In 2005 my goal is to double that income through more agressive marketing, website marketing, my referral reward program and using my autoresponder better.

Tom Larsen

Larsen & Associates Insurance Agency Inc.

www.anarmoragent.com

To keep a postive focus.

L. VanPopering

www.rogueriver.com

My first resolution will be: ‘As part of my six-monthly business plan review to re-define my marketing strategies and set specific marketing targets.

David Moffitt

Managing Director

www.transformlighting.co.uk

To build my financial services clientele big enough so that I can do that full time.

Casey Ditmore

To overcome objection, ask for the sale and increase sales for my business.

Nikki Morrile

http://www.iabweb.com/yourchoiceforhealth

Your newsletter hit a particular chord with me as I have been feeling overwhelmed by all there is to do. As you suggested in your article I have chosen one focal point only for the next week or so. This is to run a survey of potential product ideas, so that I can choose a product to develop.

Janice

www.weight-loss-motivation-program.com

More contacts from persons who visit my site.

Paul Hegele

I’m always working to update and improve each and every marketing manual I provide, free and otherwise. I just did a complete update to the free marketing plan guide to make it even more useful.

To get the latest version just sign up for the Free Marketing Plan Guide and let me know how you like it. - Charlie