The Salesby5 Blog

Nan and Erik were asked to speak about Twitter to the 210 business owners at Fortune Small Business Sales and Marketing Summit. We helped many of these attendees to get their names and company names taken for Twitter. We quickly realized that most of these companies have marketing firms/departments, ad agencies or PR firms, so why on earth are these vendors/partners failing to get these accounts set up for their clients? Isn’t that the proactive services that they expect? Well, we think that people have low expectations and need to raise them. It should be painful to imagine running your business without your marketing company. What steps can you take today to make yourself invaluable? Are you taking the proper steps to delight your customers by saving them money, thinking two steps ahead or bringing an additional value that they didn’t expect? Drop us a line in the comments about what you do to be indispensable.

We’re in Day 2 of Fortune Small Business’ Sales and Marketing Summit in New Orleans. We heard from Victor Cheng this morning, who gave great clarity to recession proof business. Companies like FedEx, UPS, Price Mart and Coors were all founded during a recession. They succeeded (to say the least) because they solved a problem for consumers at that time. The key to building a recession proof business is to find a solution to a problem that gets worse during a recession, and to do it in a unique way. This can work nicely alongside what we learned from David Meerman Scott yesterday about social media and viral marketing. Once you have your unique solution to a problem, you will have a great story to tell, so you won’t have to spend thousands of dollars on advertising campaigns. Take a look at your company; is there a better way for you to solve a problem or a struggle for consumers today? Your most profitable area may have changed. Don’t be afraid to reinvent your business in order to offer something of real value to your customers.

(If you’re on Twitter, check out @salesby5 for conference details and live tweeting from the event!)

The Salesby5 team is in New Orleans at the Fortune Small Business Marketing and Sales Summit today and tomorrow. Approximately 210 CEOs and business owners are here, and it seems that only around 15% percent of them use Twitter. Most of them have heard of Twitter, but few are actually on and even fewer understand the benefit. We produced a video last week that shows how to join the Twitter community and explains strategies to apply this tool to business. We want to help you, because the companies that learn quickly are the ones that win! In honor of 10 Minutes to Twitter’s official debut today, we will send a complimentary copy (usually $49) to the first person who posts a comment on this blog post!

You snooze, you lose. Good luck!

The newest issue of Fortune Small Business Magazine interviewed Tom Peters. “The 4 most important words a manager or a leader can say: What do you think?”

It is easy to get bogged down in what you think, but developing teams is not about you, it’s about what you do together.

Attending the Gazelles/Fortune Small Business Growth conferences for the past 4 years, I have noticed that the recent MBA’s there are always upset that they hadn’t already learned all of this content during their education.  For example, even Jim Collins’ Good to Great was missing from their required and suggested reading lists.  In working at a local University’s business school, I found that upon my suggestion, they started making that book part of the required reading.  My biggest surprise came last night when a current MBA student told me that his professor had not mentioned blogs or social networking when explaining marketing platforms. This student asked the professor if was aware of these tools, and he said yes. Then, the professor asked the student to please explain them to the class; what they are and how to use them. I am more and more concerned as we interview students with a public relations education, and find that they do not know anything about media relations, or students with marketing degrees that don’t know how to use Google.

The #1 way to increase creativity and learning in the majority of the population is stimulus. (For the top 4% of the highest IQ population, it is meditation).

What are you doing for you and your employees to keep them ahead or at the top?

We offer:

1. Strengths training that teaches dramatic team productivity, on the job happiness, and lower turnover.

2. Full company training on how not to de-motivate at all levels. (You can find this in the research from Jim Collins.)

3. The tools to sell more product or service with less effort by 5pm, daily. (Data and implementation from thousands of research papers with a future focus.)

If you want sales by 5pm every day, you need a pipeline full of prospects. The correct number for this is 15 warm ideas/leads/clients/prospects. If you have more, great, but make sure they are truly warm. What you do with your prospects is key! Are you finding clients for your prospects? Are you saving them money before they are a client?  The world is becoming more of a competitive place. The strongest sales companies will provide so much benefit to their clients and such great communication in all areas that their competitors will not be able to compete. Which will you be and who are you working with to make sure you hold the favored advantage?

“No one has ever achieved peak performance without a coach.”
- Verne Harnish, Author of Mastering The Rockefeller Habits and contributory editor for Fortune Small Business magazine

Jack Daly rocked the house yesterday in Orlando at the Fortune Small Business Sales and Marketing Growth Summit. One of the great points was that it’s the culture that matters. As he stated, Microsoft has great benefits and great pay. They have a market share the is enviable. Guess what? People are leaving to Google. Why? It’s the culture! People want to be part of a winning team AND enjoy the adventure. Microsoft is holding tight to their products and services, Google is here to try and change the world (just how Microsoft USED to be). Google has captured their people’s hearts, hence the cult-like following.

We experienced a great culture to and from Orlando – Southwest Airlines. The chatter from the cabin went something like this. “This is your captain speaking. It seems that most of you made it on this plane alive… If you are needing a bit more light, press the button above you that looks like my haircut. I think they should add a smiley face on it. Now that I think about it, if you have a smiley face sticker, please place it on the button… Just want to let you know that the bathrooms have cameras. They only activate if you smoke, though. Maybe that’s why the bathrooms are so small. If you find the camera in there, will you let me know where it is please? Thank you.” Have you ever heard this banter on a Continental or American flight? Even now, when the domestic airlines are doing terribly, Southwest Airlines still has over 80 people apply per job. I think I know why. Do you have a culture that fires people up to work at your company?

Four of the SalesBy5 team have been at the Fortune Small Business Sales & Marketing Summit. We have worked with Bob Bloom, Neil Rackham, Jim Gilmore and today, Jack Daly. The gift bags for all 350+ attendees had the SalesBy5 barf bags as part of their package.  The interesting take away from Neil Rackham was that the #1 of the five deadly sins, based on extensive customer surveys for sales people, was “THEY TALK TOO MUCH.”  It sounds like the barf bag needs wider use…