The Salesby5 Blog

The past few weekends have been brilliant in proving that audiences vary all over the world.  Two different events with which I had a personal experience painted a vivid picture.  First, the iPad launch.  I’ve read a number of tweets, blogs and even a clip on Modern Family asking why someone needs an iPad.  It’s not really a computer, ebook reader or netbook.  It’s just…different and it’s at $500 in it’s least expensive form.  But you can read books on it!  You know where else you can read books?  In books.  Consider Luis Soriano, who has a “biblioburro” or a “library donkey” in Magdalena, Colombia.  Children in his part of Colombia will walk up to 40 minutes to get to school.  He’ll ride 5 to 8 hours to get books to kids.  The iPad’s price, need for electricity and web seem preposterous in those terms.  Think of all the books we could buy in developing countries!  Nonetheless, Apple raked in about $150 million in sales the first weekend.

Nan Palmero | BlackBerry Power User

How frequently do you find people talking about what they want, how important they are and what they’re looking to accomplish next? Most people are friendly enough to allow that chatter for a bit, but it gets boring quickly. Instead of framing your life around what you’re looking to accomplish, look to build a rabid fan base. A group of people that are fired up to help you in your endeavors. Do so by pointing the arrow away from you and focusing your energy in easing the struggles of others.

Understand that you can’t help everyone. Instead, look at those activities where you have been given special gifts, then apply those gifts in supporting others. Are you amazing at building websites or encouraging others to take action? Don’t hoard those gifts! Interestingly, everyone wins when you help. They win because you helped them in an area where they weren’t able to help themselves. You helped yourself by practicing your strengths. Speaking to people about what matters to them, on their level and helping them along the way allows you to build an army of fans. Do this your entire lifetime. Do this for those that you can’t imagine being able to help you in return! You’re building a better world around you that will ripple. Sooner or later you start seeing the effects.

“It’s not who knows you that counts, it’s who knows you and what they think of you.” – Ken Blanchard

photo by: aaronisnotcool

As I return from Search Marketing Expo in New York, I am remembering the conversations with ad agencies, SEO experts and the many individual companies sent to find out how to be better found online. SalesBy5 represented client Pear Analytics with three workoholics and Pear had seven more, signing everyone up for Pear’s new program, SiteJuice.  Here are a few lessons learned and relearned from this experience:

1. The attitude of the team is branding. It’s either selling or un-selling.
2. A crowd draws a crowd! We had other exibitors move closer to us to gain traffic.
3. The trade show is not about your booth, it’s about who you meet, who meets you and giving them a reason to believe that you can deliver on your promises. Our booth stopped people in their tracks and we probably spent less money than anyone on the 10′ x 10′ booth.
4. Many showed up and thought Pear was their competitor.  We were able to quickly show them how we were a asset in making them money, saving them time then showing how they could increase clients but not the work load. We were prepared with blunt charts and statements that addressed each segment. The key was clarity for the Pro’s and the Joe’s working our booth.  In the end, Pear Analytics received 171 new beta customers.

So my gift to you: As quick as you can, go to SEO Management Tool and fill out the form to use the tool. You will get a service that works 24/7/365 to make sure you are ahead of your competition in rankings and if not, it’ll tell you how to fix it.

Are you placing your least experienced employee in charge of your social media; the face of your company to millions? Too many companies are hiring inexperienced firms or college students to build and execute a social media strategy for their company.  Most of the students have either not been on Twitter, dislike it, or have little experience beyond Facebook and tagging drunken pictures of friends from the party last weekend.  Many of the companies in charge of Twitter strategies have less than 40 followers, just got a Facebook account up, or have no strategy/execution plan. Social media effectiveness is directly proportional to reach and making sure the person on the other end is listening and cares about your offering. Youth trumps age in athletics, but not with business strategy and marketing execution; that’s where experience trumps ignorance!

I challenge you to check the Twitter Grade of your social media expert.  This isn’t the final word on Twitter expertise, but it can help you in making a decision.  Take a look at our CIO, Nan Palmero’s Twitter Grader score.  You’ll usually find his score around 99.9x (it fluctuates a bit), and typically between #1 and #10 ranked person on Twitter in San Antonio.  Now, go back to http://twitter.grader.com and fill in the twitter handle of your company or the company or person you are considering hiring.  Is it below Nan’s dog, @clunkerspalmero? His dog just joined Twitter and has a rating of 94 out of 100. The difference between my present rank, (@erikdarm) at 98.4 and Nan’s at 99.95 is 43,377 people out of about 2,841,887!

Here is a quick understanding of Twitter Grader.  Twitter Grader measures the power, reach and authority of a Twitter account.  In other words, when you tweet, what kind of an impact does it have?  It is based upon the following criteria, although not all are equally weighted:

1. Number of Followers

2. Power of Followers

3. Updates

4. Update Recency

5. Follower/Following Ratio

6. Engagement

Here is my last thought. It’s time for me to visit my Dentist, Dr. Jay Roach.  Lately, though, the guy that cuts my lawn also seems to have experience in brushing and flossing and wants to handle my family’s dental care. I think I’ll let him take over our dental and orthodontic needs. After all, he has done a good job on our lawn.  Your thoughts?

photo by R4vi

I am driving down 1604 and see this billboard.  This one amazed me in the most unique way. They gave 5 days out of 365 to appreciate customers? What happens the rest of the days? How do they track the billboard versus word of mouth versus any other advertising? There’s no way to know if Chik-Fil-A should do this every year for 5 days or attempt another strategy. So, how did it work?

This next billboard had a benefit attached of possible employment as well as a way to interact and they know if it worked. Now, if I worked for Walgreens (I’m very willing to help their marketing department make their signs smarter and more effective), I would add the following to the web address: http://www.walgreens.com/careers1604. Then, we know just about how many people took action due to this specific sign and if it worked in getting applications via the website. In June 2008 I wrote about “your website can be your best sales person” and part 2 was earlier this year. Part 3 is coming up with the best tips for Chik-Fil-A, Walgreens and you.

Considering the economy and the difficult job market, it’s an especially important time for new graduates to be well prepared for success, especially online. The wonderful part about this time in history is how connected and accessible recruiters, executives and decision makers are online. This means easier access for the folks that are leveraging the free tools available to them. Let’s review some of the tools and tactics I suggest for accelerated success.

1. Have a High Speed Summary on Your Resume

If you haven’t heard already, people are busy. No one has time to review your twelve page resume and nobody cares about all your extracurricular activities, at least not on your resume. Your resume is merely to get your foot in the door. To do this, I suggest you do things a bit differently. I tell job hunters to include a high speed summary at the top of their resume (under their contact information), instead of an objective. A high speed summary includes 3 or 4 bullet points of what makes you awesome and sets you apart. Make it as powerful as you can, showing leadership, dedication, intelligence or whatever special qualities you are able to bring to life. If you’d like to pick up my favorite free template, head over to lifeclever.com and download it.

2. Clean Up Your Social Networks

One would hope that you would never show up to a job interview with a beer in hand – save that for when you’re golfing with the CEO after you’ve been hired. Similarly, you should review all your social networks, online photo galleries, blogs and other websites for less than flattering photos. Promptly remove them as any person who is hiring can likely find them as well with a quick search on Google, Facebook, MySpace and the assortment of other nooks and crannies online. Instead, why not make your sites a place to help sell yourself with pictures of you doing great things with and for others. Make these sites sales tools that work for you by telling the real story of you, instead of working against you. Test this by having your friends search for you and see if they can pull up anything questionable about you.

3. Register on Linkedin

Sure, you’ve been on MySpace and Facebook for some time now. It’s time for you to also register on Linkedin. Never heard of it? No problem. Head over to Linkedin.com to get started. Complete as much information as you can that is pertinent. Just like a resume, have someone proofread what you’ve written for accuracy and grammatical errors. Use a headshot of yourself (not bonging a beer). While you’re at it, why not make all your headshots, avatars, and gravatars match across your websites. Yes, it takes time but you develop a consistent personal brand. Also, remember to create the personalized URL, it’s a breeze and free.

4. Join Twitter

Have you heard of Twitter on tv? If you don’t know what it is, hop over to Common Craft and learn about it. While you’re there, why not brush up on some other topics like Google Docs and RSS. Once you’re on, use Twitter to contribute to the conversation in a positive fashion. Provide great links to things you’re passionate about. Help others who are struggling by encouraging and coaching. People are grateful and others notice. You’ll see that Twitter is chock full of decision makers and you can speak to them – directly! Here’s a hint, if it’s available, use your real name or a shortened version of it as your user name. Once you’ve chosen this, do your best to use it across all your networks. Come find me, I’ll follow you back.

5. Set Up Your Google Profile

Remember the resume that you’ve been working on and the Linkedin profile that you sweat over? Why not pull all that information over to your Google Profile. No Google Profile? No Problem. Get one now. Be sure to link to your other pages and networks. Have a look at mine, if you want an example. You can also do this with PeoplePond for additional hits on Google.

6. Get Involved In Your Community

Your parents and friends have already told you, but getting involved in your community is a great way to get connected. Getting involved can mean applying your abilities for non-profit at a place of worship, participating in one of the many “camps” or even attending a tweetup. There are amazing people all over, be sure you get outside of your usual group of people you’re comfortable around and meet some new ones. You never know when that next person will be your next mentor, boss or business partner.

If you’ve applied these six steps, you will soon have a number of new friends, contacts and abilities. You’ll be amazed as to how easily “searchable” you become online as well as how well you can leverage the internet to make you look as good as you are. If you have additional suggestions, I’d love to hear them in the comments.

As seen on MySA

How do customers perceive your products, services and innovations?

5% ROI success rate: The Boston Consulting Group found that only 4.5% of innovations meet or beat targets for return on investment. This is an 86% decline, down from the 35% innovation success rate reported in 1985.

83% of brands are becoming commodities: A survey by Copernicus Marketing Consulting found that in 40 out of 48 categories consumers perceived brands as becoming more alike and, in only 3 categories (automobiles, liquor, and beer) was brand name considered more important than price.

The  key distinction between innovations that exceed ROI expectations and those that fail is dramatic difference.  Invest your resources in products or services which customers truly perceive an overt benefit in and provide them with a real reason to believe. Otherwise, you better fail fast and fail cheap!

Source Doug Hall

Our purpose at Salesby5 is to inspire others. We talk of inspiration often, as it has so much to do with sales. One of the stars on our team is Kya, who is our Brand Evangelist. She has radar that picks out “REAL.”

She has a unique strength to know if someone is sincere (real) or fake in seconds, where most are about 100 times slower. Why does this matter? She can pick off someone trying to get a date, sell copier toner or attempting to get in your wallet faster than my computer can get an Internet connection. Tomorrow’s success is today’s real. This is why we fire customers who are rude, lie or don’t pay when they say they will pay. This is why we do not take a customer or vendor who we do not feel has the REAL Win-Win attitude versus just WIN. We need to feel good about making them prosper or there are plenty of others.

A few thoughts on being real regarding sales:

If you have to remember your pitch: Fail
If you can’t remember the prospects problems and your opportunities: Fail
If you remember a client’s child’s name because you care: REAL!
If you remember they love Papouli’s Greek Grill’s Mediterranean Salad for lunch on Thursdays: REAL!

The point: Get real or get a new job. Today is about transparency and about being real. Fake billboards or sales pitches that leave me wondering don’t work anymore. Do you need some REAL in your life?

photo by Korrigan

We are on the road back from Alpine, Texas. We spent a few days with great people and great surroundings. The great people I am talking about are the people that live there. From Steven at the Gage hotel, to the countless that wave you to cross the street instead of just driving through the intersection, to the waitresses at the Riata who wanted to know all about where we were from and what we did, these people made an impression on us. This is just a tiny glimpse into a small town with real heart. It is a great place to visit and those who live there seem to love it.

The key: These people are selling, and it feels like it is from their heart. The next time you do business with a restaurant, hotel or store, check the pulse of the culture and see if it feels real or fake.

Being involved in about twenty political campaigns, the biggest being the mayoral campaign of San Antonio, something has come to my attention—the candidate matters! Their brand, their words regarding the benefit they offer, how they will offer that benefit, and of course, their dramatic difference. What is most amazing to me is how their team can help sell or un-sell them! Poor communication, lack of understanding regarding technology, communication etiquette and lack of personable skills all matter to an extreme. One person that does not fit the brand of the candidate can make all the difference in having people want to support with cash or time. One person has the ability to de-motivate a team of people that would do almost anything for someone. This is not just in politics of course! It is life.  If you or the people that work for you are leading other people, you are selling! When they are de-motivating, giving orders, throwing assumptions out and not living the values you preach, they are un-selling, therefore making it easy to compete against you.  Are you setting your team up for success, secondary leaders and a the ability to lead tribes of their own?