Cure for the Common Cold Call: Achooooooooo!

There is a cure for the common cold call. Don’t do it. It’s not that it can’t work but rather that it is a very inefficient method (produces minimum results for maximum effort) that should be used only as a last resort.

Here are some ideas about how to approach an important decision-maker in a manner that has a much better probability of getting a meeting:

• Do research on them to learn about their business and personal goals, interests and experience. The more you know before you contact them, the greater the potential outcome of your interaction.
• Reach out to them through a common connection. This may be through the staff on an Association they belong to, one of their colleagues whom you know or somebody who knows them personally. If you don’t have a common connection, create one.
• Start the relationship in “learn” mode, not “sell” mode. If they want to buy from you, that can be determined after communication begins so don’t assume it. If it turns out that they are not a candidate to purchase from you but they like you (partially because you didn’t try to sell them), they may make a valuable introduction to somebody else.
• Develop a keen understanding of their concerns, which are often shaped by conditions in their industry so that you can speak intelligently with them about their perceived needs
• Email blast short messages with very appealing titles that indicate strong subject matter understanding of their industry, market and needs. If the title is right, the percentage of recipients who read it is dramatically higher.
• Create a new email blast campaign every Quarter and follow up every single email sent with a series of 5 phone calls that span the Quarter: 1 a week later, 2 & 3 spaced a week apart and 4 and 5 spaced a month apart.
• Be active in Associations where your target prospects congregate. Help bring in Members, with Events and make friends with the staff and with Board Members. They know the members and can open doors after you’ve contributed.

Achieveeeeeee!

The Big Plunge: A Free Business Assessment

Considering a MAJOR move that might risk your ranch?

Trying to build up the courage to take some risks in your business? On this page you’ll find free business assessment tools that will help you. They were inspired in part by reading “Shadow Divers” by Robert Kursonwill, which I’d recommend you read.

It will provide you with a compelling illustration of just what extreme risk looks like. A quick business assessment of this venture would have had large red letters marked “danger!” More »

Building & Turbo Charging Your Sales Team

Frustrated with your Sales team or lackluster results? Are you constantly thinking about sales training in your local region? Stop settling for sales performance that isn’t generating significant earnings.

You CAN set a higher bar, strengthen your sales team, your sales processes and drive higher sales in a matter of months! This straightforward PowerPoint presentation,“Build & Turbo-Charge Your Sales Team”, gives you a practical step by step checklist on what to do to make it happen.

Rank your current status A, B or C on each item. If you score an “A,” keep up the good work, if you score a “B,” focus on it & figure out how to do better. If you score a “C,” get some help re-engineering it or out-source it. Sell more right NOW! I’m allergic to long sales cycles… and you should be as well.’

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Falling into the same (Mouse) Trap – Getting Out of Sales Slumps

Getting out of sales slumps: unique case study ahead.

We have a 110 year old arts and crafts bungalow whose old basement with a very low ceiling is visited by mice every winter.  In 12 years as official mouse warden, I’ve trapped more than 100 mice and that’s a large enough sample for me to believe that I know at least a little about what works and what doesn’t. I’m a freelance Consumer Reports of mouse traps.

For years, my staple “tool” has been the familiar spring-loaded trap that sits on a ¼” thick 1.75″x4″ piece of wood. My bait of choice is thick, sticky peanut butter. The particular mousetrap brand I’m using now is from www.tomcatbrand.com and features a yellow cheese-looking platform to hold the bait. More »

The Next Growth Strategy for IBM

In a March 9, 2009 article entitled “IBM chief upbeat on growth potential”, Kevin White writes about IBM’s optimism that it can parlay its 8 million square feet of data center resources into a virtualized, cloud based computing infrastructure that dynamically manages business services. “In an upbeat letter to shareholders, chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano outlined how the company would develop smart, digitally aware, networked and intelligent systems with pervasive instrumentation and interconnection, as well as build out cloud computing services. ”

IBM’s Willy Chiu, VP for IBM’s Cloud Labs described how the company is working to be able to string them all together through virtualisation and cloud-based provisioning so as to be able to dynamically manage business services. “Ultimately, it’s all about changing the economics of enterprise computing. It’s all about boosting efficiency. And it’s about doing more with less.”

Before Twitter, before Google, before Microsoft there was IBM. The gold standard of corporate excellence was a proud organization and the “men of IBM” wore blue suits with white ties. IBM stood for reliability and innovation. It was the “go to” equipment choice – don’t bother considering the alternatives.

But dominance led to complacency and IBM lost its way. This loss of prestige and power was personified by its inability to understand young Bill Gates who clearly outmaneuvered IBM in Microsoft’s early days. Since then, the proudest of U.S. corporations has been quiet for a long time. Its biggest news was its 2004 $1.75B sale of its PC business to the Lenovo Group. IBM once dominated this business but failed to keep pace with Dell and Hewlett Packard.

Can IBM rise once more and be king? Stay tuned.

–Art Jacoby