Things that catch my eye…

I’ve been talking a lot about the importance of making a big impression right out of the gate. From (Re)Encoded’s website, here are some really great business cards that do just that!

We’ve been commenting quite often recently about the inevitable decline of the printed newspaper. In this electronic age, newspapers are taking big hits in circulation which definitely affects their profitability.

I’ve been watching my own home-town paper, The Manistee (MI) News-Advocate, waiting to see how this small-town daily was going to react to all this. I haven’t been holding my breath. “The Snooze Advocate” doesn’t even have a website.

Well, all that’s changing, and my hat’s off to my old friend Jack Batdorf, publisher of The Pioneer Group of newspapers, which includes the Manistee daily. I recently got an email directing me to the new website -ManisteeNews.com -and look what I found…a really smart introduction into Web 2.0 interactivity!

According to their splash page (now removed)…you, the reader could interact with the paper in a variety of ways; by joining online forums and being a contributor, by submitting your own photos, or by adding information to the community calendar.

We’ve been saying all along that the best way to use the Internet these days is to establish a dialogue with your communities, prospects and customers -and the News-Advocate hits it right on target.

Keep this in mind when you’re planning the next generation of your website and you’ll be miles ahead of most of your competition.

Right now, I’m ‘repurposing’ years worth of books, articles and columns into online video and audio lessons. Savvy entrepreneurs are cashing in by creating interactive multimedia learning environments that deliver knowledge worth paying for. Teaching Sells provides in-depth training materials that will give you everything you need to succeed in this exciting new arena of internet business. I highly recommend Brian Clark’s new Teaching Sells concept and use it myself.
Click here for free Teaching Sells report.

Joe Girard is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the World’s Greatest Salesperson. All by himself, he sold more cars per year than 95 percent of all the dealerships in North America. And he did it for more than a dozen years in a row. In fact, he consistently sold more than twice as many cars as whoever finished second.

So how did he do it? Well, one thing he did was to apply his Law of 250. Girard believed that everybody knew about 250 people.If he could get everybody he came in contact with to remember him and recommend him to their friends, it would expand his marketing efforts 250-fold.

Joe committed himself to staying in touch with every lead, prospect, and customer he had ever acquired. He did it with greeting cards. He sent out over 13,000 cards every month, each of them personally signed. He mailed them in plain envelopes, always a different size or color, so that nobody would think they were junk mail.

Girard’s best advice: “It doesn’t matter whether you’re dealing with Moms and Pops who are buying cars or tax preparation services, or if you’re dealing with senior executives who are placing million dollar contracts. People like to do business with people they like, and if you pay attention to them on a regular basis, they are more likely to like you. The point is to stay in contact, maintain rapport, and keep our customers thinking of us.”

Send out one sales letter or make one sales call a day; quantity is less important than making it a habit. And give yourself a little time every day to attend to your marketing.  Ten or 15 minutes is great, a half-hour is even better. Maybe it’s the first thing in the morning, or the last thing you do in the afternoon…but put it on your calendar and stick with it. And remember; you don’t have to do everything at once. Just one percent a day gets you there. Divide and conquer your time-consuming and difficult marketing tasks.

The view from my office today. Yuck.