TEN Things You Can Do To Guarantee $1,000,000 in Sales This Year

Don't expect to see some huge major revelation in the following list. If you have been reading my blog, every one of these has been covered in the past 12 months. My guess is that you aren't doing them. Maybe one. Maybe two. Maybe none. But the list is foolproof, if you should ever decide to own every item on the list. Please note that if you click on the short versions below, each one will take you to a full article on the subject.

1. Set goals - The process of setting goals is one of the most effective ways to increase sales. This is something you do nights and weekends, not during the sales day.
2. Make lots of cold calls - If you're not at $1,000,000 yet, you need more customers. Use e-mail, mailers, networking, etc. to create prospect lists.
3. Prepare and educate yourself in your lines, your industry, and your craft (sales). Read books, listed to CD's, attend seminars on success and selling. As much as humanly possible, do this in evenings and weekends.
4. Execute - Getting the order is less than half the battle. You will generate more sales from existing customers than from new ones. Give your clients 110%.
5. Do everything with enthusiasm. There is no substitute for an enthusiastic attitude, and enthusiasm can be a substitute for many other shortfalls.
6. Create a niche that you can exploit. Don't try to be all things to all people. You can't know 500,000 products.
7. Establish a market driven approach. I suggest website/blog/e-mails.
8. Ask existing customers for testimonials and leads.
9. Don't ever give up. Invest in your future with whatever it takes for a year or two. The dividends will last for years.
10. No excuses. Don't be ruled by the economy, the customer, the suppliers, your boss, your bank, or your bad attitudes. It's 100% up to you. I guess I've never written an article on this subject. I need to do that.

Does this list make sense to you? Would you add to it? Subtract from it? A different order of importance? Let me know in the comments.

Would You Like to See Your Name Up in Lights?

The Next Part of this story is only for those of you who intend to be in the business for the long haul. If you're just passing through, this will make no sense at all to you. In order to accomplish this next phase, you will need to invest 200-300 hours with no real hope of a return in the first 6 months. (200 - 300 hours is 2-3 hours per day for 100 days. I can write an entire book in that amount of time.) In other words, it seems like a lot of hours, but in terms of your career it is a pretty small investment.

Become a Minor Celebrity

I'm stealing the headline from Dan Kennedy, again, but I have lived the principle in four industries. Dan Kennedy says that he hopes he is never recognised in a restaurant, but he darned well better be recognised at a trade show in his industry.

For you, that means your local chamber, Kiwanis, Optimist, Rotary, 10K runs, etc. Do you have to be a city councilman or on the school board to accomplish minor celebrity in your area? Not at all. But depending on your skill set or personality, here are a few ways you can dramatically increase your visibility, and thus your network, which will convert into an entree'.

Service Clubs and Chamber - Every town has Rotary, Elks, and at least two political parties. That is only the beginning of the groups you can join to help out in your neighborhood and help grow your business. Also think scouts, kids baseball, basketball, soccer, PTA, or parks and recreation.

Event management - Maybe your town has concerts in the park, 10 K runs, bicycle safety week. The list is too long. Find out what these events are. If you can't sell them stuff now, help run the event. Establish your credentials as an event planner.

Swag expert - Hold seminars for marketing people in the proper use of promotional products.

Non profits - If I have to list these for you, you haven't done your basic homework yet. Churches, foundations, shelters, and so many more are in very great need of people to help out. You get some really nice feel goods for the work you do, and start to build your reputation at the same time.

Associations - It is certainly a good idea to belong and be active in your local ad specialty business groups. However, other business groups, networking associations, and the like can be a great place to generate business and increase your celebrity.

Fewer New Articles

Someone asked today: "Your not blogging as much these days?" Sadly, it is true. However the reason is at least partly due to a good thing. Another caller said: "Yeah! My business just jumped on March 1." Well, so did ours. Thanks to many of you. But I come home exhausted just trying to keep up.

Don't lose faith. I will put up some new material over tomorrow and over the weekend.

Six Reviews of "Running A 21st Century Small Business"

Check out the reviews that are popping up at Amazon.com. You may know some of the reviewers personally. Here's one:

"An excellent book that covers starting up a business from "Soup to Nuts". This should be required reading for any entrepreneur before taking the financial risks involved in any such undertaking. As with all things learned, this book provides a solid starting point to continue to grow from. Randy covers . . ."

Read the rest here, and buy a copy of the book!!

Global Warming. What! Me Worry?

Hopefully, you are now sending out e-mails on a regular basis to your customers and prospective customers. YOU'RE NOT?!?! Well, no time like the present to start. In this day and age, you have to be in front of the customer all the time. Your competitor will be. If you aren't, it could be the fatal difference.

When sending out e-mail blasts, whether to your own personal 50-500 list or to a larger list, the most important element is the subject line. No one knows better than you how many e-mails can be hitting the inbox on any given day. I get 200 a day. You might get more. The client is going to open your e-mail based on three major things:

1. Does he get the e-mail at all? Or did it go straight to the junk file? This will, in part, be determined by the subject line. Certain words or phrases are going to trigger automatic filters which will send your important information into e-mail oblivion.
2. Who is the e-mail from? When I look at the sender, I know whether previous materials have been useful.
3. The subject line. If the e-mail is received, and the sender is someone who commonly sends good stuff, my final decision to open now, open later, or send to trash is based on the subject.

If you are still wondering what this has to do with global warming, I'm just about there. Current events will not be filtered out. Current events create interest - "Why in the world is Joe sending me an e-mail about global warming?" Current events are not just the same old thing. And current events will be very important to those who follow them.

Of course, you must be careful. The tie-in can't be too far fetched. Global warming, for instance, could be a tie in to earth day promotions, recyclable promotional items, an actual article of great interest, or a cute play on words of some kind.

This is just one way to play the subject line game. For more on this subject check here
and here

How To Introduce the New You to Your Best Prospects

Dan Kennedy famously tells of a fellow who opened a deli. He decided to give away free meals for the first month. He advertised to residences and businesses in a five mile radius that there was a no strings attached free meal available to all comers.

You can imagine that he had lines out the door. And, according to Dan Kennedy's telling it, the restauranteur never had to advertise again. He was full up.

Obviously, to do such a promotion, the business owner must know that the product or service is going to win over the client. The results would not be so good had he given away all those meals and folks didn't like the food.

We grabbed a page from that book in our 100 free bottle offer. We knew we were offering better customer service than pretty near anybody in the business. So, we figured if distributors tried us once, they would be back over and over again. And even for salespeople who already knew of our amazing customer service, they could prove it to one of their customers with 100 free bottles on us.

How could you use an approach like this to round up a bunch of new customers? In fact, you could do exactly what we did. You just have to make sure that the money you spend on the free swag gets delivered on time and has a measurable impact on some aspect of your client's business.

Obviously, you would always want to use this approach to get a larger order at the time of the 100 free offer. The math works out a lot better if some of the customers you offer this idea to, actually end up buying 500 and paying for 400.

Why You Do the Thing You Do

I have heard many different reasons given why employers choose certain people over others, or why some are more successful in sales than others. Height, looks, skin color, and sex come to mind. Better reasons include: completes what he starts; does what she says she will do; follows up.

If I were to compile such a list, I think the top item would be enthusiasm. Not just the general kind of wild-eyed optimism that some accuse me of having, but a specific passion for the task at hand. So ask yourself, are you passionate about selling promotional products to your customers? Why or why not?

A really good Advertising Specialty salesperson would say something like, "I love helping my clients to become more successful at what they do. I am so invested in their event that I am as excited as they are to see what the results are. I even fine tune things along the way for maximum success."

When you think like that, you arrive at your clients office with your vast understanding of what works and what doesn't in various circumstances. You can site examples from non-competitive situations which will help to point the way. You stop short of taking over their management of the idea, and help them to feel 100% ownership of the idea and the results.

And you do so with great ENTHUSIASM

Promotional Products should DO NO HARM

Doctors make a promise when they enter the profession to "do no harm." When they evaluate, prescribe for, operate on, and discuss health issues, this must always be in the back of their mind. Surely, the swag we sell has the potential to do harm in a way that most advertising does not. While it is possible to run an ad that insults people or irritates them, most ad execs think that even negative exposure of this kind can have long term benefits. "Write bad stuff about me, just spell my name right."

It just isn't the same with promotional products. If I open an envelope to get at the pen, I expect the pen to write. If it doesn't, or worse yet, I end up with an ink stain on my shirt, I will remember who sent that pen. And it won't be so that I can increase my business with them.

If I am dealing with a company who is attempting to persuade me that they produce quality products or services, and they gift me with an inferior product or one that doesn't work, there is an immediate translation in my mind that if they can't get the Tchotchky right, why should I believe they can do anything else right?

To make this equation even more critical for you as an ad specialty seller, the buyer who is responsible for the campaign will hold you directly responsible for every complaint he receives. Am I wrong?

Therefore, I think you should have the words "Promotional Products should do NO HARM" on your business card, on your stationery, at the bottom of your e-mail, and on your forehead. (That recommendation is in jest, but you get the point.) If you need to teach the buyer anything it is this: "Promotional Products should do NO HARM." You gain three huge benefits if you are able to make this lesson stick.

1. You won't lose the account due to bad products
2. You will position yourself differently than your competition.
3. You will generate more dollars of revenue from higher quality products.

Google - The Latest

Shocking News Update: Depending on your situation, it may not matter much where you are on Google's search engine.

If you are primarily interested in local business, make sure that your website or blog is being advertised on a regular basis by e-mail, regular mail, promotional give-aways at BTB events in your area, and other traditional ways of getting your street address and phone number out. Whenever possible, get e-mail addresses from any and every possible client. Then send them something INTERESTING two to four times per month.
As pointed out in another article on this subject, the combination of Promotional Products are other such key words and your local city, cities, county, etc., are where you want to be first on Google. You might even want to buy position.

If you are more national in scope and hoping to get lots of drive-by traffic from folks searching on various search engines, the name of the game is now frequent changes and lots of incoming links. If you can get your favorite suppliers to start a distributor locater, links from industry sites get very high points in determining your position. It is worth it to spend the time developing the links.

But even national accounts should be working the hardest on developing e-mail lists and giving updates by e-mail to willing recipients. If you really want to increase traffic, be prepared to pay for it.

Personal Blog or Website

I first posted this almost a year ago. It is more true than ever, but I don't see very many new blogs starting up.

Do it today!!! I normally build my case before I try to close the deal. In this case the admonition is just too important. You, as a distributor salesperson, whether independent or employed, need to create a personal blog or website today. Briefly, there is little difference between the two. A blog is a website which generally has a look and feel of a public personal journal. It looks like what you are reading now.

A website can look like a blog, but websites cost $60 to $100 per year or so. Most blogs are free. Blogs are usually real easy to work with. Many website providers do a great job of making website creation easy, also, but they are still a bit more complicated.

Now I'll tell you why. It is getting harder and harder to get folks to open e-mails you send out as advertising. We all know how hard it is to get appointments or even get phone calls returned. So how do you get your unique style in front of the client. Your blog can be used to offer non commercial ideas and advice (like this one), that your client may find interesting and useful to doing their job. If you can capture folks with the blog, they won't mind that there are advertisements for your services on the page or even in some of the posts.

Now, later, your e-mails can refer to the blog (e.g. giving a teaser about a recent post.) Your potential client will be far more likely to open your e-mail for that information than they are to see an offer for bicycle water bottles. Well, actually, that might be the one thing they would all want to know about : ) but you get my drift.

Much more about this later. Please comment about your successes or failures or ideas regarding blogging for business.

What You Learn at the Front

With our new policy here at American Quality Products of trying to answer every call within three rings, we have added my phone to the CS bank. If everyone in CS is on a line or out to lunch, I'm next in line to pick it up. Well, you can imagine that I've learned much from this.

1. 20% of our calls want to know the e-mail for the art department or our fax #.
The art department is art_dudes@CaliforniaSprings.com. The fax is 562-903-0606

2. 20% of the call are checking on order status.

3. 20% of the folks who hear a male voice ask if this is customer service.

4. We get lots of calls for our lesser known items: baby bottles, spray misters, ice cores, and 14 ounce bottles. I get almost no calls for my favorite item and one of our best sellers, lenticular bottles.

5. Well over 1/3 of those calling are first timers who saw one of our products on ESP.
The number for SAGE is not even close.

New Book Update

The new book, Running A 21st Century Small Business, rises on Amazon.com from 234,000 best selling to 5,600. If you go look right now it will undoubtedly be the 9,876th best seller or some other number. It really jumps all around. In any case, hopefully you'll go visit and buy one for your use. Or you might consider purchasing several as a PROMOTIONAL PRODUCT that you could give away to your small business customers.

Now, it would seem to me that there would also be an opportunity to offer this book to banks, insurance companies and others as a promotional product. If you would like more info on that, send me an e-mail.

Promotional Products Should Communicate the Message

A very, very, very long time ago I sold padlocks for a living. The unique proposition that we offered was a padlock shaped like a discus, and aptly named the Discus. Its claim to fame was that it was almost impossible to defeat. Sales were doing ok, but not great, until one day we produced a new point of purchase display. It had a sample of the lock attached to a hasp, and the display card said simply "The Strongest Padlock Ever Built." In a very short time, the Discus dominated the sales in the stores where that display was posted.

In order for you to become invaluable to your customers to the point where cost will no longer matter, you need to be certain that their message is delivered with maximum impact using your vehicles. You may or may not be able to affect what words they use, but you can certainly attempt to persuade them regarding their use of color, location, size, and products that are the most likely to create the desired action. And, don't hesitate to be bold enough to recommend a change in the text, too.

Most promotional product vehicles have little room for the message, and/or the advertiser may wish to keep the image "low key" in order to make the gift more appealing. Ironically, this same customer may opt for the lowest common denominator in terms of product quality, resulting in a negative image, and less use of the product.

For these situations it becomes even more critical to do two things:

1. Think long and hard about the desired image. Even if it's only the corporate logo, we can create action. For instance, can we do the corporate logo with a .com address? Instead of My Company Inc., it becomes MyCompany.com. Can I at least get the website or 800 number in the image? How about a tag line, if nothing else? If my image is just a swoosh, I don't need a tag line or an 800 number. If my logo is not so well known, a short tag line - "Strongest Padlock Ever Built" - will have 10 times the impact of just "Discus."



2. Make certain that the gift is accompanied by collateral materials which create action. I never want to be accused of stating the obvious, but I also want these recommendations to be complete. By adding brochures, coupons, audio tape, cd's, dvd's, a second premium item with action implications, or gift/prepaid cards, you increase the potential return on investment many fold.

It is interesting that bicycle-style water bottles lend themselves so well to these two elements. You can have a low key message on the bottle with an action brochure, hang tag, sticker, gift card, or 2nd premium inside or outside of the bottle. At California Springs Line, we offer all of those services.

Communication hasn't changed, except to the extent that there is much more of it. Every week there is a new guru who thinks he has invented a new way of selling or marketing or communicating. While some of the vehicles may change (internet, cell phones), the things that reach decision makers' hot buttons haven't. And especially when you have a limited number of words or images to use, it is no time to experiment.

Visceral, emotion-packed, clearly annunciated offers move people. "End Itchy Scalp With One Treatment Per Month - Guaranteed Call 800-555-5555."

If you have the room, you can add bullets and explanations later, but that line tells the whole story and includes a promise and action to be taken.

Is it too bold to tell your customer what you think their campaign should look like? Only if you do it in a condescending way. You can even give someone else the credit. "My other customer used this approach to great success." "I was reading about this campaign the other day. This is what they did." At some point your stock will be so high with your customer that they may be calling you for advice.

If you consistently read this blog and other commentors in the industry, you can become a master marketer. There are also some outstanding books I have and will reference that can increase your sophistication rapidly.