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Many a savvy salesman has lost a sale because he failed to know his customer. You may have infinite product knowledge, a slick sales pitch, and a phenomenal product - but, if you don’t know who needs your product and why they need it - you’ll be about as effective as a death row pardon at two minutes past midnight.

So, how do you gain a better knowledge of your customer?

Keep a pulse on the market. Spend a bit of time on your favorite search engine, and you will find a wealth of information at your fingertips. From mainstream media sites, to blogs, to trade publications, much of this information is free of charge; however, if you do have to part with a few bucks to further your knowledge, consider this an investment in your future. Chances are these expenses can be written off as a tax deduction.

“Like…what’s that on your face?” the young girl blurted out to another young girl in the mall. Being less than ten feet away, I couldn’t help but see the zit was bigger than the nose on a clown in the Fourth of July parade. Could she have been more rude? I don’t think so. How could she say that in front of the girls friends and several strangers?

We see poor manners everywhere…the mall, theatre, restaurants, airports…anywhere people gather. A very good friend, Sybil Atwood, recently shared her concern with what she phrased, “the end of civility” in our society. Once again, Sybil has inspired me to dig a little deeper.

There are so many different variants available in regards to article marketing that it is difficult to narrow it down to even the top few. Suffice it to say that they all have one very common factor. All of them are going to need articles in order to get anything done. All of them rely heavily on the written word to generate a well-known name associated with a topic or subject, to generate traffic to their web site and ultimately to decide how well the people marketing the articles will be financially speaking.

Do you want to increase sales because your sales are lagging? Have you considered hiring a woman?

Women in business are an exploding factor within the American economy. This growing force must be doing something right to have high profits than other business. One might even speculate that women are better sales people than men given what the research suggests.

Currently, do you have women in your sales force? If so, how is their performance to your male sales force? If not, are some of your policies negatively affecting their long term sales performance?

For example, women in sales usually are much better relationship builders than men. They will take the time to establish a relationship of trust and mutual respect.

Much has been said about the advantages of search engine marketing and e-business. Over the years, it has established itself as an effective way to promote products and services by increasing their visibility in search engine results, while increasing the Return on Investment (ROI). Some of the most popular SEM vendors nowadays are Yahoo! Search Marketing and Google Adwords.

In order to use the search engines effectively to promote your business you will need to have a plan and stick to it. You can get instant traffic by purchasing pay per click advertising on the major search engines. However, it takes considerably more planning and effort to get the vast amounts of traffic available from free listings in the search results.

My golf game progresses in direct proportion to two things:

The quality and quantity of practice time I put in.

Staying on a regular coaching schedule with my golf teacher.

About three years ago I was consistently shooting in the high 90’s and ready to melt the clubs into a paperweight. Today I’m in the low 80’s and dip into the 70’s.

I don’t say this to boast (Ok, maybe just a little), but to compare this improvement to what it takes to be successful in sales.

“Happy people sell more,” is a cliché that every manager hears but doesn’t really listen to. Good morale seems to have a trickle down effect and when a manager is happy, everyone is happy. But to boost sales, everybody has to be happy even when the manager is not. Morale building through employee coaching has to be a real commitment by managers and owners alike. When you see morale translated into sales it is easy to see why this is so vital. When you see dollars flooding into your business when morale is high and employees are happy and motivated you will see the wisdom in consciously stimulating morale.

Client Gathering

Our goal is to extend our marketing effort with new relationships. These relationships should be with agents who have experience with selling products in the senior market. This vision is to build an interactive client base through the process of client gathering.