Angry Birds/Smart Phone: First of all, I had only heard about this game from other people in my office and haven’t ever tried it myself. I found a You Tube video that went viral within hours of being uploaded. Angry Birds created a joint marketing strategy with the Smart Phone and T-Mobile. Within three days this video has received 2.7 MILLION views! Along with 20,175 likes, 450 dislikes and 2,960 comments. I read some of the comments and many people are looking forward to either buying the phone or playing Angry Birds. Talk about going viral! Here is a prime example why you want to get involved with launching videos. Here is the link if you want to check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzIBZQkj6SY.

Lady Gaga: The Lady Gaga is a very intricate woman and has a reputation for the shock factor which by all means is a great marketing strategy all in its own right. However, the Lady took the promotion of her new single to a level no one expected. She worked out a deal with the infamous game Farmville to promote her latest single. Yes, the Farmville neighbors all went to visit the Lady at Gagaville. It was quite the amusement and Farmville took on new animals, seeds and trees to play along. Not only did Lady Gaga use a social networking platform for her business but she went deep inside the platform and invaded an actual game. In fact, she invaded 43.5 million farms!  I’ll be honest with you; I personally, wouldn’t have listened to her new song if it wasn’t for Farmville. And I like it! Great move for the Lady.

Capital One: Capital One has always been a huge television promoter with fantastic commercials but you haven’t seen much of them on the social networking scheme. Well, you have now. After Lady Gaga was off the farm Farmville added a new promotion with Capital One. If you signed up for Capital One’s credit card then you would receive a Visigoth Statue. That statue then gives the Farmville addict 7 days of double mastery. I know, what the heck am I talking about? Or you might know since Farmville has 43.5 million users. In fact, it s projected that Americans will spend over $2 BILLION just on Farmville in 2011.

Partnering up with popular games as part of your marketing strategy isn’t a bad idea after you do all the figuring. Americans are expected to spend over $2 billion on Farmville alone. Facebook currently has 500 million active users around the world.  Only 20% of those are Americans so if Americans are spending over $2 billion then how much money is it total? I sure hope you get the picture.

Related posts:

1. 5 Tips to using Social Media Networking
2. Basic Guide to Social Media
3. A Guide to Marketing Videos

To narrow the scope let us take a close look at how to market through social media websites. As of June 2011 the top 5 social networking websites are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and Ning. They are rated by the number of daily users on their website. Take for instance our #1 website, Facebook; they have 550 million daily users from all around the world. Imagine what you can do using the tools to market your product or service through an outlet of this size! In fact, most Facebook users expect to be able to join a group or be able to like your company. It goes with telling the story of their life when they want to show the world that they like you.

Create your Marketing Plan: You have many advantages to reaching millions of people a day using social media. Even though the scope is so large on who you can reach you still need to define your marketing strategy and target audience. You don’t want to go out there like a loose cannon. Who are you ultimately trying to reach? What is your capacity as far as handling sales? What kind of return on investment are you looking for? What is your advertising budget? How fast can you process orders?

Some of the filters you can choose from for reaching your target audience are location, demographics (age, gender, language), likes, interests, education and work. With these kinds of filters you can go local or global in a particular niche. The possibilities are endless which is why you need to narrow your scope.

Create your Advertisement: Now that you know what you want to sell, how much you can handle selling and who you want to sell it to you can create your advertisement.

• Open up your business account through whichever social media site you will be using.
• Ensure that you are able to stay within your budget and that the potential return on investment meets your needs.
• Input only applicable information about what you are trying to sell. You don’t want to get the person confused or off on another tangent.
• Always select a picture to put on your advertisement. People are visual.  First they will see the picture and then wonder what you have to say.
• Only run one ad at a time. This type of advertisement is usually billed per click. If you are reaching your target audience then one ad will be enough. Otherwise, you will have the same person clicking on your ad and that will skew your data and you won’t know which ad really sold them on your product or service.  Run one ad for a period of time and then run another ad when the one is over. This will give you an idea of which strategy is working best.

Tips for Successful Advertising: Now that you have created your ad you will want to follow these tips to have that ad work for you more effectively.

• Don’t send people to your home website page – people may get lost or side-tracked.
• Send people to a task specific landing page – if you want them to sign up for your newsletter then send them exactly to where they sign up. If you want them to buy your product send them to the shopping cart.
• Create a “Thank you” page – after they have completed the task they will be taken to a page that says “thank you” and this is where you would also ask them to either “like” you or “follow” you.
• Create a new ad – people get use to seeing the same thing over and over and next thing you know they don’t actually see your ad (even though it is right there). Create a new ad every couple of weeks so you stay fresh and your ad pops out to them.  This will also help you improve your CTR (click through ratio).
• Don’t get discouraged – the onset of advertisement may appear to be slow. It takes time to build your marketing campaign to be successful. If one ad wasn’t as successful as you wanted then try something different next time. Brand recognition doesn’t happen overnight so if you are new to the website you have to get out there and build up your brand reputation first.

Customer Engagement: A true successful marketing campaign includes engaging your customers. Social media networking sites will allow you to do this on a fan page or twitter account. Here are some tips to help you to engage your customers.

• Design your page with excitement and brand recognition. First of all, you want people to recognize your company. Second of all, you want it to be fun to visit your page.
• Add apps to your page. Some ideas include, placing your favorite YouTube video on your page through “You Tube Box”(of course, you will want it to pertain to your business). Through “Networked Blogs” you can showcase your daily blog on your fan page.  These are just a couple of ideas there are thousands of apps to choose from.
• Create your publishing settings to where you can update your fans about things they will want to know and make sure you don’t update them about minor details that may begin to annoy them.
• Create photo albums. People love to view pictures and want to know who is doing what. If you have special events break out the camera and put them on your fan page.  You can also put pictures of your logo or products.
• Create status updates to keep people informed. Or to really boost engagement ask your fans or followers questions so that they will begin to engage in a conversation with your business. This is a great way to find out what people like, don’t like or want to see from your business.
• Keep an event calendar updated. You can invite people to attend any special event. It can be an online event or a physical location. Get people involved!
• Return comments. When someone leaves a comment on your profile page then shoot them something back in return.

Want More Likes? Naturally, in the world of marketing online the more likes (or followers) you get the more successful you are at reaching your customers. Here are some ways outside of buying them that you can get more likes.

• As already mentioned above – advertising on the website such as Facebook or Twitter.
• Promote your business page to your family and friends through your personal profile. You can suggest that they become fans of your business through your personal profile. We all have to start somewhere and really if they are your true friends they should like your business, right? Ask your friends to suggest your page to their friends and so forth. Before you know it you could have thousands of fans and likes.
• Send a powerful message. The power of headlines and titles are sometimes not given enough credit. Have the title of your fan page stand out and bring the WOW factor to people that come across it.
• Have credibility. Make sure your information is accurate and free of grammar and spelling errors.

Related posts:

1. Basic Guide to Email Marketing
2. 5 Tips to using Social Media Networking
3. 10 Ways Cafes Can Generate Customers Using Social Media

Define Marketing Purpose: You are ready to blast the highway of ecommerce but you need a plan of action. Where are you starting and where do you want to end up? Define what your purpose is for each email marketing strategy. Go back to the basics and determine what is the product/service, who is your target audience, what is your budget, what price will the customer pay, the return on investment must suffice the expenditure, and finally what is the promotion or gimmick? After you have determined all of the basics you can get started on your email marketing campaign.

Choose a Mailing System: During your travel on the ecommerce highway you have to understand that the traffic is heavy and you will need a mailing system that can provide you with features and service that can handle thousands of emails at a time. This type of task will not be able to be managed by a person but rather a program. A mailing system will help you design and publish your email. There are many templates to choose from and from the list of emails you provide they can send your email to everyone on your list for you. In addition to the original email you can develop auto-responders. Below are some sample mailing systems with their highlighted features.

• Mail Chimp:
  • Design Email Newsletters: Choose a customizable template to not only get your message through but promote your brand.
  • Publish Your Content: Provide your list and they can ensure your email gets to their inbox versus their SPAM box.
  • Share your Newsletter:  Allows you to use social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook to promote your campaign.
  • Track your Results: Mail Chimp gives you detailed reports and even suggestions on how to improve your email campaign.
  • Manage your Subscribers: Allows you to create groups, create auto-responders, ensure data security, create custom forms and participate in co-branding with Mail Chimp.
  • Integrate with Others: Mail Chimp will help you connect with others through your personal email program such as Gmail or yahoo, integrate with places such as PayPal, Google and social networking sites, and sync with a shopping cart program.
  • Mobile App: Take Mail Chimp on the road with you. You can access Mail Chimp through your mobile phone.

• Campaign Monitor:
  • Create and Send Emails: You design your own email and they will send it.
  • Managing Email Lists: They are able to create your Opt-in Emailing list and remove those who wish to unsubscribe. They are also able to create and manage different groups within your master email list if you choose to send email campaigns to different groups.
  • Reporting and Analytics: Shows you who is opening the email, clicking links, forwarding and interacting with your business on social networking sites. Share your newsletters with Twitter and Facebook; determine who is using which email client and compares campaigns and spot trends.
  • Resell and Profit: You can create subaccounts and sell Campaign Monitor services under your own domain.

• Sign-up.to
  • Managing your data, lists and forms: you can create an unlimited amount of data and lists, create forms, set up texting programs and auto-responders.
  • Design and test campaigns: Create personable emails, texting and twitter campaigns with their designer program. They will also test your campaign prior to launching.
  • Sending messages: Gives you data on the best times to send messages or updates.
  • Sharing your message: Allows you to share your messages with Twitter, Facebook and WordPress
  • Analyse: Provides reporting on the effectiveness of your campaign from who is opening your email to who has purchased your product/service.

Create Your Email List: You can create your email list at the same time of researching which mailing system you would like to use. In fact, you may already have been working on gathering emails from people that are already interested in your product/service. The main point is that you can only solicit those that have an interest in your business otherwise, it is considered Spam.

• Stay away from SPAM: SPAM is using an electronic message to people who have not expressed an interest in the product or service. SPAM can give you a bad name and damage your businesses credibility. Only send emails to those that have expressed an interest in your business, product or service.
• Snail Mail: You may already have people’s physical addresses through your current customer base. You can send them a flyer or letter asking if they would like to be added to your emailing system for free newsletter or notification of different promotions.
• Advertise your email: Make sure your email address is on all forms of advertising: business card, invoice, flyers, newspaper ads, television ads, radio ads and all direct mailings.
• Voicemail: Leave your email address on your voicemail as an alternate contact method.
• Contact your business by email: Create a situation where the person of interest is only able to get more information by emailing you.
• Opt-in Email Advertising: Partner with another business where the customer can express interest, receive promotions, or sign-up for your free newsletter. A few names of businesses that promote this type of service is Submit Express, Optin Services  and Data Depot.  You may be able to find a Mailing System as described above that has Opt-in Email List Management as one of their features.

Just say no to SPAM: The point of creating your email list is to ensure that you are not sending unsolicited emails. Here are a few more tips to ensure you stay off the blacklist.

• If you are sending an email to someone in the United States make sure you are following the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. The act specifies that you must have a way for the customer to opt-out and the business has 10 days to remove the email address and once the email address is added to the opt-out list the email address cannot be used for any further data. The content must be accurate in the subject line and a label must be added if the email contains adult content. There must be a physical address of the advertiser or publisher. There are both criminal and civil enforcement. You can read the entire act at: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-108publ187/pdf/PLAW-108publ187.pdf.
• Do not buy email address lists.
• You can use a double opt-in feature. The person will first opt-in for your newsletter and then you send them a confirmation email. The person would then to select a link to confirm they have opted-in.
• On your opt-in form provide an example of what your emails look like.
• Suggest that the new email contact adds you to their white list to prevent your email from going to the auto-filtered spam box.
• Use your subject line wisely and don’t try to sell in the subject.
• Use email etiquette. Stay away from red text, several exclamation marks, all caps and certain keywords.
• Set up an abuse@yourdomain.com to accept complaints. This will allow you to see who has reported you to spam in their email.
• Do not add images as an attachment. Include them inside the email.
• Use an email mailing system (previously discussed above)
• Finally, obtain your spam score from Contactology. You can input your message into their file and they will score your email to determine if you are likely to be filtered into a Spam folder or not.

Monitor your Mailing System Reports: No matter which mailing system you choose make sure you continue to review the reporting that they provide you. This will help you determine who you are reaching and what their activities are once they have opened your email. The mailing system reports will also help you or they may automatically determine the best time of the day to send your email. The global market is powerful and even if your business is local you may need help to manage a busy ecommerce site.

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3. Tips and benchmarks for the best email marketing

Turning your website from a drab static website into an exciting lead producing machine can take time and money. Here we have a long list of lessons we have learned over the years to produce the best web design that converts readers into customers. First though, here are some quick tips;

• Optimising your website for conversion is an ongoing long term initiative, a few quick points from this page will not make your website the best it can be.
• Focus first on the offer, then the layout.
• Dramatic changes can yield dramatic results. - we once turned a 40% bounce rate website into a 5% by scrapping the theme and starting again.

Customisable. You should be able to make many changes to a template without spending too much time sweating over the code. You should also be able to do most of that through a CMS system or something similar. The easiest CMS Systems are Joomla and WordPress.

SEO friendly. Your website should at least be optimised for seo, that meant no flash, good used of H1 tags, css menus, title tags, meta descriptions and a HTML and XML sitemap.

Title and description Tags. These are the main tags that Google will use for your listing. Including the main city and your telephone number will increase conversions. Also making sure that the right products and services are included in your description will make sure you are attracting clicks from the right customers.

Accessibility. The best web designs work with all modern browsers and have W3C valid code. Up to 30% of

Reduce form fields required

Remove distracting banner images

Strengthen the visibility of the headlines.

The offer should be easy to see and understand. A large dark headline with light background behind a features area will attract attention to the offer. The best web designs have all other elements balanced, so they don’t overwhelm. You should use short, direct, language that speaks to the user.

A clear primary call to action. Don’t just state “click here”. You should have action verbs that relate to the offer, like “Buy Now” or “Find Me”

Repeat the call to action. Drive customers to interact with you.

Use contrast. The more contrast you have, the easier the website is to read.

Keep the pages short and to the point. Whilst it is “en-vogue” to have a long page jammed with SEO Keywords, the best performing web designs have less content, more focussed offers and several calls to action.

Content on the left, call to action on the right.

You need a two column layout, with the sales proposition to be the first thing that the user sees. Their eye will naturally track to the right, where you put your call to action button. When they use Google to search for your product you want them to see the offer first.

White background.

All research in readability points to having a white background as THE best way to endure copy is readable. To put this another way you should have black text on a white background. If the background is not white, it makes it difficult to use any other colours in your body.

Stretchable side areas (outside of the body)

Either you need to build your website at 1000px across with stretchable side areas, or have no side areas at all.

Reduced Javascript and CSS fed from the bottom

Cut down on javascript and CSS, have them in one file each and load them from the bottom. This will speed up the web page load time.

Test everything

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1. Make the prospect feel the need to buy the product or service
2. Make the offer attractive
3. Use emotions to engage the prospect
4. Make the prospect comfortable with buying the product or service, reduce fears
5. Escalate the prospect towards a completed transaction.

In the world of “professonal” seduction, there are set patterns and plays that have been accepted as the best ways to attract a member of the opposite sex. One of the leaders in this world is Neil Strauss, who wrote the bestseller “The Game”. Using the main ideas behind his book, you can see how a business can use the rules of attraction to pursuade a new customer to buy from them.

Pre-Game

Like any good project, good preparation prevents poor performance. Understanding what you are trying to sell, and how you are going to sell it goes a long way to building a marketing program that delivers results. In this stage of the marketing process, an organisation would look at past sales, the competition, the current market, their budget and their current product or service to build an offer that will be attractive to potential clients. In the book “The Game, ” the author went through a make-over process, shaving his head, having his ears pinned back, and joining a gym. Businesses could also follow this lead, but rebranding, or reinvigourating their marketing programs.

Select a Target

Targeting is the most important step in the marketing process. Finding and understanding your customer will allow you to build a thorough picture of their mindset and desires. In seduction terms this would mean a quick scan of the bar or venue to find the girl or boy you are going to target. In marketing terms this means going through your customer list, looking at lists of potential new customers and narrowing down the field. Targets can be selected by demographic, by industry, by buying location, by budget etc. The main aim is to narrow the field to an acceptable number of targets that all have something in common. You also want to be able to talk to the target customer as if it is a face to face meeting.

Approach and Open

The seduction community says you have 3 seconds to approach and start a conversation with a girl. This should be no surprise, because first impressions are the most important. In order to attract their attention, PUAs (Pick Up Artists) use “peacocking”, a method of wearing outrageous or loud clothing to attract attention. In marketing, you have 3 seconds to grab and maintain the attention of the customer. A businesses “peacocking” might be using outstanding design and original marketing. This also means using a headline that will interest your customer. The best headlines are short, punchy, use simple language and convey the most important piece of value of the product or service.

Demonstrate Value

The best description of what constitutes good value, is adapted from this website

1. There is a clear distinction between, and balance of, customer benefits and the offer.
2. Value involves the psychological and physiological effects of both the benefits and the offer.
3. Good value harnesses the difference between surface attraction and deeper neurology based attraction.
4. Value includes practical applications and call to action to increase the overall odds of converting.

In order to demonstrate clear value to your prospect, you need to show what they will get, how it will improve their lives and how they will feel by purchasing from you. Demonstrating value is also showing that other people have bought from you before, that you have delivered on your promise, and you are not going to let the customer down. This might come in the form of a testimonial, a review from a magazine, or just some facts about how much of a difference your product makes to people.

Disarm the Obstacles

There are many reasons for a customer to not buy from you. In a B2B transaction this might be no previous business relationship, that you are new to the market or that they are “not looking for” your product right now. Having pre-prepared lines to counter these situations are important in telemarketing and face to face selling. In the PUA world, this would be equivilant to being “not really looking for a boyfriend“. To translate this into a business context might be the prospect being “happy with their current provider“. To counter this situation you don’t want to bash their current provider, you don’t want to claim to be better either. You want to put the seed of doubt in their mind, and show you have value in your product. Something like “Does your current provider give you XYZ? Because if when we work with our other clients, not only do we offer ABC but also XYZ“, where you fill in the blanks with your core values.

Isolate the Target

Meeting face to face is an important part of the buying process. We more easily buy from people than we do an automated machine or a website. In the seduction community, moving the target into a position where you are one on one reduces the opportunities for the bond to be broken. In a sales environment, this would mean trying to get a one on one with the prospect, without the distraction of being in the office and around other people. This also means isolating

Create an Emotional Connection

Again, here is paraphrasing from a pick up routine, applied to a B2B transaction.

Find out if the prospect has any business problem or desire in business they feel “passionate” about. Most likely, these may be their sales team, not spending enough time with their customers, cash flow, gaining new customers, anything they would do even if they did it for free.

Ask them “what’s important to you in doing (activity)?” “What do you feel about(activity/business)?” At this point, you are looking to recreate the feeling of doing that activity, and moving them into the states they feel while doing the activity.

Then, feedback these nominalized “feelings” and link these to your product. “What would it be like if we could get you feeling different? ” “How would you feel if we could remove that frustration?”

Emotional connections in business are rare, and hard to achieve. However the goal of all marketing is to get the prospect to recreate the feeling they would have when using your product or service. If they can see themselves using your product, and they can feel themselves in that position, you are most of the way to completing the sale.

Blast Last-Minute Resistance

Most rational people know when they are being sold to. Sometimes it is obvious when someone is trying to sell us something, eg telemarketing, and other times it is less obvious, word of mouth etc. Instinctively people will throw up conscious and subconscious reasons to NOT buy from you. In the case of the really desirable TV or car, the nagging feeling that you can’t afford the purchase is the subconscious urge to not buy that product. It is the job of the marketing professional to smooth the way through those rough waters. In the seduction community, disarming the obstacles might be dealing with a girl who wants to leave with her friends, or getting the guy to move to a quieter location. In  the marketing process this would be focussing on the value of the product to the customer, offering payment plans and guarantees to reduce anxiety or giving them a money back guarantee.

In the pick up world, targets almost always go for the person who isn’t completely available to her. In the business world, we always want to deal with partners who are busy with other clients too, because it shows they are valuable. We all want something we can’t have. We want what there is a limited supply of, because by the sheer fact there’s limited supply of it means it must be good. Many pick-up artists know this so here are a few things they do that can be applied to marketing;

* Always be the first one to end the conversation, if on the phone

* Set a time constraint on any offer, or for the conversation

* Say the product will only be available after a certain date

As you can see there are many ways good marketing is like seduction. Going through the websites on seduction unearths a great range of methods for breaking down a prospect and turning them into a client.

Creative Development is a marketing and web design agency based in Sydney.

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Industry Averages (approximately);

Open Rate: 15%
Click Rate:  3%

Our Performance on email lists over 500 people.

Open Rate: 18%
Click Rate:5%

10 Tips for the best email marketing campaigns;

1. Target. Find out to whom you want to send the email campaign. Make sure you know what they are interested in and what market they operate in.
2. Produce quality content. Every day we recieve over 100 emails from various people that go straight to the bin. Make sure you are given the recipient information that is up to date (what is happening in your industry NOW), informative, (dont just give facts, give analysis), fresh/new, (don’t just cut and paste from google, and don’t just steal other people’s conent) and above all make sure that it is well written. Poor content can also get caught in SPAM filters.
3. Develop a list. Make sure that your recipients have allowed you to send them emails. Make sure you have taken down as much information as possible, at least their names and company names. We use double opt in lists that people actively subscribe to. We also use a different technique to market to potential customers, however we are always moving them to the opt in lists. We are also only marketing to small numbers of potential customers so that we can keep the email campaigns from becoming SPAM.
4. Use engaging subject lines. Try to sound informative and not “marketing”. Try to show that the email is up to date and has the latest information. Here are the top 5 subject lines, thanks to Mail Chimp
   [COMPANYNAME] Sales & Marketing Newsletter
   Eye on the [COMPANYNAME] Update (Oct 31 – Nov 4)
   [COMPANYNAME] Staff Shirts & Photo
   [COMPANYNAME] May 2005 News Bulletin!
   [COMPANYNAME] Newsletter – February 2006
5. Personalise. By far more people will open, become engaged and click through an email that has their name in it, or their company name.
6. Use a good email marketing program like MailChimp. Mail chimp is a good example of an email marketing client because you can measure your performance, personlise the email. They also have bucketloads of tutorials on how to improve your email marketing campaigns.
7. Include several calls to action. We make sure in every campaign we give the customer good reasons to click through the email. This can be a particular special offer, a great article or just asking them to update their information. We always use immediate language and make sure that it is clear what is a link and where they should click.
8. Test for design/looks. For every email campaign we produce we run two different types of tests. Firstly we test the design of the email in several different browsers. We test for useability and readability. We want to make sure of the following;
   Do the images show up, if they don’t does the text make sense on its own?
   Does the image preview well, so people can see the heading/first paragraph of the content without opening email?
   Does the design render correctly in a few different browsers
   Does the content make sense? It seems easy to produce content but is it short, punchy and readable in Outlook?
   Do the links do what they are supposed to do?
9. Test for performance. We also run A/B tests to see which of two headlines create the best response. Every email marketing campaign we run a small test to up to 50 recipients with a few different layouts of content. We keep track of the changes we make and use this information to improve the performance of our email marketing.
10. Track Measure Repeat. All our email marketing campaigns are active. We try not to run short term once off marketing campaigns. We use our knowledge for each market in each campaign to improve the quality of the next one.

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There are some other ways of doing it but that is basically it.

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Moonfruit is a well documented web design company that gained sales by promoting a give away.

Travel writer Zoe Dawes gained followers and a strong reputation through the use of Twitter.

The Blood and Tissue Centre of Texas grew in followers after  a “tweet up”.

Salon.com has a interesting list of Twitter success stories.

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Here are a few quick tips on how to market yourself at conferences.

Attract Attention

Make your stand engaging. Hire someone to be an entertainer on your stand. Make sure your stand is interactive!

Creating a competition is a good way to build leads, but there is limited brand building and emotional engagement. A slightly better way would be to tell them to either fill out a form, or write on a business card, “In 25 words or less tell us why our product is amazing..” or something to that effect. Engage the people around you by asking them to become involved with your company. Don’t just let them throw their business card in a bin.

Engage the Audience

Depending on your budget, you could have a “skin health” expert at the stand, giving people free 10 minute facials. Make the entertainment relative to your product or service. If your brand is a fun brand, make the stand fun as well. In order for them to get a head massage, or whatever the attraction is, the should need to book a meeting with you later in the week, or some other similar valuable business goal.

Always follow up

Follow up should always be a phone call. In the least you should email them the next day saying you will call them later in the week. If this is a lot of work, get a temp in to arrange the meetings for you. Face to face meetings trumps anything else ten fold.

To track follow ups, good old spreadsheets are probably the “best way” as they are easily manipulated and you can sort quickly through them. Otherwise most CRM systems should have a leads section you can put them in to.

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Make promises and keep them. Reliability. Accurate information, perfect delivery, on-time, on-cue.

Excellence in EXECUTION. NEVER JUST SATISFICE.

Speed

Answer your communications-emails and voice messages-promptly.
Early Opportunities – DON’T Wait your turn
Go that extra mile
Integrity EAT-SLEEP-BREATHE-OOZE INTEGRITY “My life is my message” Gandhi. Avoid over-promising.
OBSESSED WITH LEGACY “Dent the Universe”
EYE FOR THE DIFFERENT Go beyond “same old, same old”
Stretch Is Routine “I will drop it off myself”/ “I will see to it
personally”.
Personal Attention
Strong communications, keep them informed. How long does it take you to drive to your clients? How many companies can you call in that time?
Thankyou notes. When was the last time you wrote to say thankyou for your time/appointment/feedback. Compliments are critical.
Phone calls. Spend time each day just saying hi!
It is the little things that can make all the difference. Most business is won or lost in
barely 15 seconds. Personal contact beats e-mail 100 – 1.

Customer feedback, LISTEN!! Gather testimonials. Note pleased customers.
What made them happy. LEARN from unhappy customers. What made them unhappy? How can we improve our marketing/ induction/ training/ development/ service??
PASSION! ENTHUSIASM! You’ve got to be out there on the lunatic fringe INFECT everyone with your passion for results.
THIS IS A QUEST! WHAT IS OUR STORY? HOW DO WE WANT TO BE REMEMBERED?

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