- Part 62

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How Do I Motivate My Sales People to Sell More?

By Charlie Cook | May 25, 2005

“What’s the best way to motivate my sales staff? They’re not making as many calls as they could or making as many sales as I think they could?” – George, Colorado

In my experience the problem is most often not the sales reps or their motivation. The problem is that sales reps are given goals and often incentives but aren’t provided with the marketing strategies or tools they need to get the job done. A carpenter would have a tough time building a house without a hammer, a saw, lumber and nails. Sales reps are the same. They need the right marketing tools to get a prospect to the point of a sale.

The best way to motivate new and experienced sales people to sell more is to give them the tools they need. It’s hard to get excited about selling any service or product when the sales script your using, the company brochure and your other supporting materials don’t help you get the prospect’s attention, interest and their business. It’s no wonder so many sales reps lose motivation and drive. Just telling sales reps to sell more and offering larger incentives isn’t a long-term strategy for increasing sales.

If you want to motivate your sales force, you need to show them how to stop only selling and instead focus on helping their prospects get what they want. Few people I know are interested in being sold, but everyone needs a wide variety of products and services and most will happily pay for things they want.

Here are a three ways to motivate your sales force.

1. Provide you sales reps with a marketing plan and a marketing strategy that gives them with a steady stream of qualified leads.

2. Teach your sales reps how to talk about what your firm does so it prompts interest instead of a yawn with the 15 Second Marketing guide.

3. Show your sales reps how to use questions instead of a sales pitch to start conversations that lead to sales. Support them with marketing materials that will prompt prospects to contact your sales reps. Learn how to apply this proven marketing strategy using More Sales with Less Selling.

Give your sales reps a marketing plan and the marketing tools they need to help your prospects get what they want. You’ll see their motivation and your sales soar. – Charlie Cook

Is All This Marketing Information Free?

By Charlie Cook | May 24, 2005

“Is this all free? If so, how come? What’s in it for you?” – Neva

Yes, the marketing blog, the marketing guide “7 Steps to Attract More Clients and Grow Your Business” the marketing articles on this site and my marketing newsletter “More Business” are all free.

Why?

I want to help you grow your business. My goal is to help as many marketers and business owners improve their marketing so they’ll be more successful.

What’s in it for me?

Every time I share an idea with you that helps you attract more attention, improve the response to your marketing efforts and get more clients I’ve shown you how I can help you. Each time you read an idea of mine, try it and find out that it works I consider it a success. Why?

At some point you’ll get serious about your marketing and want more than just a tip here and there, you’ll want a better marketing message or better networking strategy, you’ll want to create a marketing plan that helps you build your business, or you’ll want an online lead generation strategy that works to increase your sales. Or you may want to work with me directly to show you how to grow your business .

When you do get serious about growing your business, if you enjoyed my free marketing guide and weekly marketing tips, there is a good chance you seek out the marketing resources I provide.

Does this give to get marketing strategy work?

Each month I have more subscribers to my marketing ezine, more sales of my marketing manuals and more marketing coaching clients. The more ideas I share, the more my readers buy my marketing manuals. – Charlie Cook

How Can I Ensure My Web Site Works With All Browsers?

By Charlie Cook | May 23, 2005

When people visit your web site you want them to see it at its best. If it looks good on your computer, you may assume that everyone else is getting the same professional view of your online business, but there is a good chance you’d be wrong. Each browser, browser version and operating system combination interprets your web site code differently.

It may look great in your IE browser, but columns could be squashed to AOL viewers or typefaces bold instead of not. Unless you own one of every operating system, each browser version and type, you won’t know how others view your site. Fortunately there is a simpler way to check your sites browser compatibility.

Thanks to an alert Ari at ximedia.net I was alerted that one of my primary pages had alignment problems in IE and was quickly able to fix the Marketing Tools Buyers Guide.

To see the problem I tested Browsercam.com. Within a couple of minutes it provides screen shots of your site from as many browsers and operating systems as you want so you can ensure your site looks its best for all viewers. Worth a try. – Charlie Cook

What’s My Biggest Ezine Headache and How To Avoid It?

By Charlie Cook | May 17, 2005

Once or twice a year I send out a marketing ezine that doesn’t arrive the way it should. Here’s how I make this mistake and how you can avoid it.

When you use text from an MS Word document and paste it into an email, hyphens, quotes, apostrophes and characters other than numerical or alphabetical ones look fine, but watch out. When you send the email to someone, these hyphens, quotes, apostrophes all get turned into /s or ?marks or other unusual and unintended characters. Even though you wrote the best newsletter in the world, it looks silly when it arrives.

Try it. Send yourself an email with hyphens, quotes, apostrophes and see what it looks like when you get it. The email you thought was letter perfect will arrive a mess.

The same thing happens when you send an HTML newsletter, hyphens, quotes, apostrophes turn into odd characters. Even if you preview your HTML newsletter in a browser window you won’t catch this problem. The unintended transformation happens when the ezine is sent.

Avoiding this techno goof is easy. I just paste my completed ezine into a text only editor and then go through it and replace each hyphen, quote and apostrophe with the text editor’s version. Then when I paste the finished version into my ezine broadcast system or use it to create an HTML email so my readers get the what I want them to get, a professional looking marketing newsletter. – Charlie Cook

How the Marketing / Sales Cycle is Like Farming

By Charlie Cook | May 16, 2005

This morning I was talking with a West Texas sales rep for an agriculture firm which prompted the following farming analogy.

Marketing involves the preparation of the soil, gathering seeds, planting them and then nurturing their growth.

Sales involves waiting for the right moment and then harvesting the results of your marketing endeavors.

Both are essential to making a profit. Without marketing you won’t have any leads to nurture, nor any relationships with prospects that can result in a sale. Without closing the sale you’d be leaving your crop of prospects out in the field.

Is your marketing and sales strategy balanced to generate the leads and nurture the prospects you need to generate enough sales?
– Charlie Cook

How Is The Free Marketing Ezine “More Business” Valued At Over $300 a year?

By Charlie Cook | May 12, 2005

How is the free marketing ezine worth over $300 a year?

Currently the 87 million dollar a year publishing company Thomson Gale is now selling seven of my articles, the same ones you get weekly for free, for $5.95 each on Amazon.com.

If each of my weekly marketing articles is worth $5.95 then your annual subscription to my free marketing ezine, “More Business” is worth over three hundred dollars, not to mention the value of the free marketing guide “7 Steps to Attract More Clients and Grow Your Business”. Actually the ezine and free marketing guide are worth tens of thousands of dollars or more a year to those of you who apply the ideas.

Without my permission and without the knowledge of the original publication that printed these articles, Thomson Gale is now distributing articles for which I own the copyright on Amazon.com. Here’s a link to the screen shots in a pdf file. Or you can just search for Charlie Cook on Amazon.com (look at the bottom of the listings for my articles).

No, you don’t need to write me a check for $300 to keep your subscription active. At least for now “More Business” is sent to you every week for free to help you grow your business. Of course if you want to get serious about taking your business to the next level you’ll want to read my best selling marketing tools , including “More Sales with Less Selling “, all of which are a steal at their current prices.

And please don’t pay Thomson Gale to buy my copyrighted articles, which they’ve promised to remove from Amazon in a couple of weeks. – Charlie Cook

Can I Rely On Search Engine Placement?

By Charlie Cook | May 11, 2005

“I have a client who is generating lots of business from the top placement of his listings under his keywords in the search engines. Is this a risky strategy or should he be looking at pay-per-click advertising?” – M. Anderson, KPMG

Given the vagaries of the search engine algorithms and the volatile nature of the search engine marketplace I’d advise your client to develop multiple ways to generate leads over the internet. He could be doing very well with his Google search engine placement this year, but if Microsoft has their way, they’ll be putting Google out of business and his search engine placements could be irrelevant.

Even if his current listings continue to do well, why not invest in pay-per-click advertising and generate 30% more leads and business? – Charlie Cook

How Do I Get Leads for My Network Marketing Business?

By Charlie Cook | May 10, 2005

“I know you don’t favor networking marketing but I was hoping you could give me some advice. My partner and I are marketing a great product but we just can’t seem to get enough leads, what do we do?” – Don

Most network marketing companies sound to good to be true. They have a good looking product, they’ve developed all the marketing materials and all you need to do is close the sales and make a fortune with only a couple of thousand dollars of start-up costs. Why wouldn’t you want to do it?

Maybe some people are making millions with their network marketing and I’m only hearing from the people who aren’t succeeding, but I get a ton of requests from people who’ve signed up and aren’t. They’ve invested their money in the networking marketing program, are willing to work hard, can sell, but just don’t have enough leads.

The problem isn’t the hard working committed people who sign up, it is the way the networking marketing firms structure they’re marketing. In most cases it doesn’t follow the steps needed to get a prospect’s attention, demonstrate value and credibility nor prompt prospects to contact them. In brief, most networking marketing companies are designed to do a good job of getting people to sign up but do a poor job of giving these people the marketing tools they need to succeed.

I can’t change your company’s marketing for you but I can show you how to market get attention for yourself with your marketing messages and your marketing plan. To get started take a look at the 15 Second Marketing guide and The 5 Principles of Highly Effective Marketing manual.- Charlie Cook

How Can I Double Sales and Profits?

By Charlie Cook | May 3, 2005

Want to double your sales and profits. Rethink the quantity and pricing of your products and services.

In 1987 Americans started eating twice as many carrots after baby-cut carrots hit the market. At twice the price per pound you’ll not only be seeing better in the dark when you eat these tasty carrots but the companies that produce them are seeing profits twice as large for a product that is less than half the original size.

Think about it. You could double your sales and profits by modifying the marketing of a product or service you sell – Charlie Cook

I’m Getting Lousy Leads, What Do I Do to Improve My Lead Generation?

By Charlie Cook | May 3, 2005

“My company provides me with 18 leads each week, they even schedule the appointments. All the I need to do is to make the visits to each of the companies. They problem is that few of these leads are qualified and after spending a half hour or more to get to the company I find most of these leads don’t meet the basic qualifications for our services. What do I do?” – Paul Shaw

Following up on unqualified leads is frustrating and a big waste of everyone’s time. Imagine instead that every call or appointment you made was with a prospect that was happy to see or hear from you. Imagine they were interested, already aware of your qualifications, credibility and the value of your product or service? You’d waste a lot less time, improve lead generation and close a lot more sales.

Paying others to generate leads for you is generally a waste of time and money. I use a lead generation system that each week provides me with more qualified leads than I can handle. Each lead arrives on my desk with enough information for me to determine whether the prospect is a likely match for my services and worth following up with.

Instead of accepting unqualified leads, its far more effective to put your own lead generation system” in place. Learn how to improve your lead generation with “Creating Web Sites That Sell“. – Charlie Cook

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