What does your brand mean? Does it have a soul? And how does finding the soul of your brand improve your results, in business and in life? Planning your sales and marketing for 2020? Don’t miss the forest for the … Read More
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The red/yellow/green copy critique: improve your copy in 15 minutes
Writing copy can be hard and frustrating. Like anything else, getting good takes practice. But here’s a simple exercise you can do in 15 minutes that will have a dramatic impact on your copywriting. I call it the “red-yellow-green” copy … Read More
Why Sales Training Doesn’t Work (for You)
What do you do when you start your own business and realize that you have actually do sales (and marketing)? That being invited on technical sales calls or the occasional account review is not the same thing as running the … Read More
Client Intake Forms
Client Intake Forms let you bring on new clients and (dis)qualify prospects faster. The traditional client intake form is a printed PDF on a clipboard– think doctor’s office. This works, but it’s slow, requires lots of data reentry, it’s often … Read More
Sales for Nerds Signed Bookshelf winners
Congrats to the winners. (See if you won.) Put the books in boxes and shipped via UPS this afternoon. And many, many thanks to the authors who generously donated the books and some time (and for sharing their wisdom on … Read More
Reasons you don’t have a Lead Magnet on your site
After I published a 3,000 word article on using a Lead Magnet to generate leads for your professional services business, responses ranged from “hey, this is exactly what I needed”, to “this would never work for me.” Within the “never … Read More
How to Generate More Leads from Your Professional Services Website
When Bob Davis started his sales consulting business, Simple Sales Strategy, his business came from word-of-mouth. That’s great, but it’s not predictable. Naturally, Bob looked to his website to generate leads. He even invested in SEO to get better rankings … Read More
Should You Narrow Your Niche? Here’s the One Question to Ask
Should you narrow your niche? And what’s all this talk about niching, anyway? And if you’ve got a niche, how do you know if you should make it wider or narrower? Let’s dig in. What’s a Niche? Think of your … Read More
Real and imaginary barriers
Running a business is hard. There are so many barriers to success. Sales, financing, delivery, marketing, recruiting, just balancing everything, knowing what to focus on next, etc. Yet we often make it harder on ourselves by creating imaginary barriers in … Read More
Don’t “Market”, “Teach” — marketing for consultants
Last week, I discussed how to “help” instead of “sell”. This is a powerful paradigm shift, especially if you find “selling” uncomfortable, unnatural, and/or unethical. But what about marketing? What about lead generation and business development? Another paradigm shift can … Read More