Monthly Archives: May 2010

Motivation for Outside Sales

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All outside sales reps know how lonely and depressing it can get out in the field.  Unlike an inside sales job where you are surrounded by colleagues who are going through what you are going through, in the world of outside sales jobs, you are often on your own.

And in those moments, it can be incredibly difficult to find motivation for what you are doing and that could potentially hurt your income.  As an added hazard, you don’t have the accountability of a manager that is near you.  If you are lucky, you will have a sales manager who requires you to call in everyday and report your sales day.  But many outside sales jobs don’t have this type of structure, and that can be very dangerous.

Being on commission provides a lot of motivation, but that human component is still every present.  And every sales rep, even an independent sales rep on 100% understand the power of this.  So what can you do to stay motivated while on the field?  Here is one simple thing that you can do to exponentially increase your motivational level.

First of all, find some motivational talks on CD or podcast.  This is hugely important.  Often these days, you can easily download a free podcast by your favorite motivational speaker.  Whether it’s a guru like Tony Robbins or a sales expert like Zig Ziglar, you should find a hero and get their podcast.

This does several things for you.  First, you get that human connection and encouragement.  No, it’s not as good as a real human being.  But it’s much better than nothing.

Secondly, you learn while you work.  So many sales reps spend so much time on the road or on planes and hotel rooms doing nothing.  Or wasting their time on watching TV or listening to music.  If you listen to informative and motivational talks, it will enhance you as a person and help you develop as a sales rep.

Getting A Plastic Coil Binding Machine For Your Home Office

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If you’ve decided to get a plastic coil binding machine for your home office, the question you’ll need to ask yourself is if you are better off with a model that is electric, or one that functions manually. While either one will produce a final product that is clean, crisp, and professional looking, the experiences involved in making that nicely bound document will be very different indeed.

There are some real benefits to using an electric machine when you are binding booklets. An electric machine streamlines the process. It makes the whole thing go faster and also takes a lot of the frustration and hard labor out of it.

With a manual machine, you will have to press down on a lever to punch the holes in the pages. While this doesn’t sound like a big deal, and with a more expensive manual model it will likely be a bit easier, it certainly does involve a bit of upper body strength.

An electric machine will do the punching for you, and will also punch through more sheets of paper than a manual machine is able to. This can make a big difference in time because you will be able to punch the holes in a big fat booklet a lot faster with an electric machine.

But the real clincher is the inserting of the plastic coils. If you have to do that by hand, it can seem to take forever. For a home office, you probably won’t have to produce so many booklets that it will be impossible to insert the threads by hand, but at the same time, it can make you want to tear your hair out.

Fortunately, you can get a manual machine that comes with an electric coil inserter. For more information about these machines, and to compare models, visit .

Giveaway coolers – promote tour business and keep your beer cool!

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As we head into summmer, or those of us in the Northern Hemisphere do, my thoughts turn towards cold beers on the beach on a Saturday afternoon. Or, if you make your living from Internet Marketing, cold beers on a wi-fi enabled beach any day of the week. Problem is, how to keep those beers cold when the temparature reaches into the thirties?

Answer – a stubby cooler, or a koozie as the Aussies call them. Who else but the Aussies could put so much time and effort into keeping beer cool? Here in England its not usually a problem for two reasons – it never gets warm enough to need one, and they drink their beer warm anyway. Strange people. Anyway, for the rest of the world, you need stubby coolers (A stubby is what the Aussies call a small can of beer, by the way). Not only do they keep the beer cold enough to enjoy, but you can give them away to promote your business.

They come in all shapes and sizes, so you can always find a product to represent your business (or have one specially made), whether bright, brash and out-loud brilliant or quiet, subtle and sophisticated. Think how you’ll feel when you go to the beach and see all that promotion for your business – and people enjoying themselves with beers from your cooler.

Made of neoprene, the cooler provides excellent thermal insulation as well as a light, comfortable carrier for the beach. And it’s not just beer – oh no, for the Europeans amongst you they also come in wine bottle sizes. Don’t forget your corkscrew, though.

So, a summer begins to kick in, except in Britain, obviously, give some thought to the perfect summer promotion – the stubby cooler!

For more great marketing ideas, come to the Post Service where you can read more about giveaway coolers and many other exciting things.

Increase Your Home Business Sales

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The top home business leads are best given by fellow work at homers and advertising on content based sites. Networking is the key to increasing your customer base and forums like Wahm.com can help you either boost your existing clientele, or create one from scratch. Blogs can help you in indirect ways as well, raising the consumers awareness from a different point of view.

There are thousands of people who refer to themselves as ‘WAHM’s or WAHD’s,’ simply put they are the Work-at-home-moms / dads and while a lot of businesses write them off as small-time, it’s quite the contrary. They swap ideas, fresh job leads, suggestions for business sales, the works, and they do this on forums. Wahm.com and freelancemom.com are communities of business entrepreneurs, independent contractors, employees working from home, and those looking to break into the businesses. It’s always best to include forums such as these because although they are all wanting opportunities, the fact remains everyone still has needs and your business could easily be the one to fill the gap.

The average consumer confesses they found a great deal while actually searching for something else. For example, your Sunday paper says Walgreens has your favorite razor on sale, however, on your way there, you notice the local gas station is having a 2-hour only sale $.10/gallon off of gas. You weren’t looking for this deal, but it popped out at you, so you of course you took advantage of this and now you have just found a deal you didn’t intend on getting. This is an example of how a wise business would use forums of home-based workers and businesses to fund their own home business.

Content based blogs and sites vying for a cause are all opportunities for your advertising needs. Imagine an article titled “Child deaths caused by toys: Harmful affects of lead paint and the manufacturers who create them.” This article is a hot topic and would definitely attract a lot of readers, especially moms. Now, say your business is selling ‘Discover Toys.’ On this article you would advertise “Lead Free Toys, improvement motor skills and mental awareness, the natural way.” Or assume your business is selling dresses. You would place an ad stating “Stain Resistant, No-Iron, Floral Dresses.”

The point is, you need to think outside the normal parameters of advertising. Don’t assume you can only advertise on like minded sites. You must recognize the Pro’s in placing ads on completely opposite sites as well. Find the blogs that coincide with your business and then find it’s exact opposite, and after that, find those which match the unseen elements of your business. Know your business and understand there are never any limits.

Marketing Your Grand Opening Ceremony

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Starting a business is an exciting adventure and one of the highlights of this adventure is the grand opening ceremony. This ceremony is much more about establishing relationships with people in your community than just celebrating that you’ve opened for business by cutting through a ribbon with a pair of ribbon cutting scissors. Businesses employ various tactics to try and win people over, including offering free samples of their products to prospective customers on opening day or pampering them with food and what not to leave a long-lasting impression in their minds. This is all fine and dandy, but before you start trying to lure in potential customers, you need to worry about actually getting people to your grand opening ceremony.

In the past, the extent of marketing this sort of event demanded didn’t extend beyond word-of-mouth advertising and print advertising in the form of flyers. While this is an effective and cost-oriented approach, you’re missing out on a large number of guests by not exploring other advertising mediums. For instance, the online advertising market has taken off in recent years. The technology has become so advanced that advertisers can target customers from within their own locale. Such targeted advertising is exactly what your event needs. However, you need to walk before you can run, so let’s focus on the basics. Set aside all other tasks, such as searching for where to rent grand opening ceremony scissors aside until your marketing efforts are fully underway.

Flyers can be extremely helpful in attracting guests to your grand opening, but at the same time can be a detriment to your business. Part of the problem lies in the fact that business owners consider flyers to be a supplemental form of advertising, when in fact they can be the cornerstone of your marketing campaign if used effectively. Thus, they aren’t particularly concerned with design quality and whatnot. Don’t fall victim to this sort of mindset. A poorly designed flyer that uses plain text as opposed to your company logo and features images from a clipart gallery can be very off-putting. Invest some money to have a professional firm design the thing, and print it in color and on some glossy paper to demand some attention. You can post these flyers around the neighborhood and talk to existing business owners to have them put up in their own establishments.

If you repeat this process for at least a few weeks, you are bound to spur some word-of-mouth advertising about your neighborhood. You should recruit some friends and family members from the get-go to start spreading word about your opening.

When it comes to online advertising, call your local newspaper and ask about what sort of advertising rates they charge. You already know exactly where their website traffic is coming from, so you can’t go wrong by posting an ad or two on their site. Again, make sure you secure the services of a designer to avoid giving your ads a cheap feel.

Media Planning Agencies

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Media Planning Agencies

Media planning agencies help their advertiser clients match their client’s target audience in each campaign with the appropriate media. By identifying the desired target audience (with client input), the agency then recommends media selections based on the profiles of the various available media while also evaluating the media in terms of cost. In smaller agencies, the media planner is often also the media buyer, but larger agencies will have a staff of buyers (usually grouped according to media channels).

Many of the challenges facing agencies today are the combined result of increasing use of integrated or multi-platform campaigns, coupled with the age-old issue of imprecise tools and measurement systems. This has often resulted in:

  • Apples being compared to oranges with each channel’s established currencies being difficult to compare across channels
  • Most of the media universe not even getting into the consideration set: if media vehicles are not the 200-300 largest media vehicles in their channel – those vehicles are typically not included in any syndicated market research hence difficult to consider for media buying and planning purposes
  • Qualitative vs quantitative performance metrics

Media Planning Agencies – Access your Data Quickly

The ANA and AAAA just released a survey indicating marketers could be doing a better job of planning media in an integrated manner. The headline in Adweek read “Integrated media plans face obstacle course. New survey shows agencies need more metrics, better grasp of Web.”

What if media planning agencies could access an integrated on-demand platform to be faster, smarter and more efficient?

Now they can. Welcome to the LogicLab Media Marketplace.

LogicLab gives media planners and buyers the unique ability to:

  1. Use the same advertiser proprietary metrics across an integrated campaign
  2. Consider a much larger universe of media vehicles, from an automated, on-demand platform for fast and easy access
  3. Quantitative, data-driven analytics for real performance metrics