Is Your Recession Over? The Top Five Ways to Profit Now
In a post-recession economy, small businesses need a fresh set of tactics and tools in order to reposition themselves for growth. Here’s how.
5 Steps to Partner for Growth
Playing a bigger game makes partnering for success a “must”, yet few amongst us has ever made that happen in a healthy and sustainable way. Let me list a few of the new and different things successful partners do. How to partner for growth……5 basic steps towards success.
Are You Missing the Smallest Sales Opportunities?
Don’t think for a second that you’ll keep this whale-client because you landed the big, initial sale. Your team needs to be accessible, reliable, and flexible. Business is about people, relationships. An authentic email. Thoughtful phone call. Focusing on them. All of these things will go a long way to building trust and growing your revenue potential.
The Shortest, Most Relevant First Outreach
Today I was reading the blog post by Sam Richter on Jill Konrath’s blog about sales intelligence. It reminded me about all the time I devote to researching prospects. I’ve been asked before what I do to prepare for a call, so I thought it would be helpful to document some of the searching that can help you get your foot in the door. Afterall, sometimes getting that first contact is the hardest part! See some of my advice on prospect research below. The goal is to send off or call with the most high impact outreach possible.
What are YOU Waiting For?
This week’s newsletter is about the excuses that we have for not taking action today on a strategy that we believe in. No time, not enough money, wrong people, team is not on board yet, etc. etc. The conversation goes like this: “As soon as I fix ‘X’, I can move forward. If you have a […]
Big Deals in Professional Services: 9 Strategic Considerations
Today’s Guest Blogger is Joseph Olewitz . Joseph has been there & done that in the area of new business development. In addition to being CEO and Principal Consultant at 22nd Story Strategies, Inc., Joseph currently shares experiences deriving from years of pitching large professional services deals on his Intentional Growth blog. As I […]
The Leadership that Drives Culture Change: 7 Critical Initiatives
Making a commitment to hunt whales is the beginning of a dramatic cultural shift. It’s more than just a new business development strategy. Embarking on this process successfully requires vision, planning, implementation and personal development from everyone involved, particularly the CEO.
Do One Thing . . . Define the Customer You Want Next
My colleague Lindsay Bayuk recently introduced me to the website Real Simple and the “Keep It Together” emails that they deliver. The subject line is “If You Do Just One Thing . . . [fill in the blank]. Actually, the first one I saw was “If you do just one thing . . . clean out […]
Why Can’t Sales and Marketing Get Along?
Of all the problems with company silos, the one hardest for me to imagine is a marketing silo and a sales silo. Yet I see these divisions all the time, even in small companies. Marketing complains that the sales team will not share information or fill out CRM reports. Sales complains that marketing is wasting time and wasting money and not delivering the right kinds of leads.
Technology To Look Big, Act Big
Many small businesses need to look bigger and act bigger in order to secure whale-sized business. Whales prospects are afraid of doing deals with businesses that look like a Mom and Pop shop. Is this you? Solopreneurs and small businesses now have the advantages of technology to make them look and act bigger in order to win the bigger sales. (Being more efficient and eco-friendly can’t hurt either).
Get Over It: Overcoming Hurdles to Implement Culture Change
Implementing needed, comprehensive change is hard. It’s really hard when it changes they way your company brings in revenue. As I’m finding with many small businesses, however, sometimes the implementation isn’t as difficult as just getting started. Sometimes just having an idea really heard is just as hard and doing the work. Even worse is when no one admits there’s a problem! In order for The Whale Hunters Process™ to really work, both leadership and employees need to be bought into the program. In order for everyone to be on the same page, it can take some convincing.
What Happened to My Referrals?
I’ve talked to so many company leaders and sales execs lately who are facing the same problem: before the recession, they acquired all of their new business through referrals. But ever since the economy weakened, the referral “pipeline” has dried up. They are frankly terrified because they have no processes in place to develop new business. This phenomenon […]