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Secrets to Building Your Business ...              Probably Not What You are Thinking

9/6/2016

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​Many of the small business owners that I meet with each week are experiencing success in their business and ready to grow. But they don’t know exactly where to start or how to plan for growth. Let’s face it, a lot of business owners became entrepreneurs because they were good at what they do in their field. That doesn’t necessarily make them good at business strategy, sales or marketing. For this post, I have pulled together several articles on the subject of small business growth to share with my fellow business owners. I hope you learn from the material as much as I did while doing the research!

This first article is a slide deck that will walk you through the fundamentals of growing your business in a very easy to understand process. Save the deck for future reference!

Growth Strategies for Your Small Business
(Presentation by Femi Olaiyafemi of Redwood Consulting was originally posted on Linked In Slide Share.
http://www.slideshare.net/folaiya/business-growth-strategies

The next article breaks things down into logical steps. I like it when I can follow a map. This article does a great job of pointing out some actionable steps you may or may not be thinking of.

http://www.inc.com/guides/small-business-growth-strategies.html

Plan your work – work you plan. Who hasn’t heard that phrase? As with anything worth doing, if you have a game plan, you are much more likely to succeed. This article is a great illustration of a business growth strategy plan by one of the best strategists I follow.

Planning Your Growth

https://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/small-business-growth-planning/
(Written by John Jantsch, CEO and founder of Duct Tape Marketing Consultants)

One of my mentors once told me that I had no shortage of great ideas and then proceeded to ask me to choose 2 -3 to focus on for the next 90 days. I have never forgotten the lesson. The best of the best still need to focus if they are going to be successful. This article points out some compelling arguments for deciding on a couple of great ideas at a time.

Is It Time to Ask Elon Musk If He is Doing Too Much?
“Are you keeping count? At one and the same time, Musk is trying to get us to Mars by 2025, create vacuum-powered transport up and down the West Coast, help Mark Zuckerberg put a satellite in space to wire some of the poorest areas of Africa, make safer autonomous cars, build a ginormous battery factory, and purchase a struggling green-tech company he helped launch.
These are worthy endeavors, every single one of them. And it's beyond commendable that Musk is throwing his considerable genius into the fight against global warming, an effort that too few billionaires have joined. But even the incomparable Steve Jobs ran only two major companies at a time.”

 
http://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/its-time-to-ask-is-elon-musk-trying-to-do-too-much.html

(Written by Minda Setlin, of the Geek Gap. Posted on Inc.com)

One of the overriding themes in any management strategy is focus – keep it narrow, don’t try to do too much. Some of the greatest business minds and most successful entrepreneurs of all time have found their greatest success in singular-minded focus. The following article points to the example of the challenges of trying to do too much at once. Don’t let your growth plans go up in flames. Get a mentor or hire a consultant you can trust (Like maybe Sales Up Solutions and Yours Truly…) and get focused on the most important next steps for your business. Then work your plan and get excited about what is to come!

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8 Tips for Increasing Online Engagement

7/16/2016

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​For years we have been talking about using content to promote your brand online. Relevant content is one of the best ways to show your customers and prospects that you are an authority in your field and should be a key element in your overall marketing strategy. Whether you are a realtor showing potential buyers that you know the mortgage process with articles about getting approved for your first home loan or a mechanic sharing information about the attributes of several types of tire tread, giving your online visitors information that they need, at a time they need it, is a great way to get attention and start the process of getting your next customers to “know, like and trust” you.

But getting the information posted is not the golden ticket. Once you have an interesting mix of content being posted consistently on your social media sites as well as your website, you need your readers to do more than just read the posts, you need them to engage! Engagement is when your page visitors share or re-tweet your post, click through to the links you include, make comments that will be seen by their fans, respond to your call to action or actually contact you to buy your product or learn more about it. Getting social media browsers/followers engaged can be a challenge. Here are some tips that might help you get your fans responding to the great content that you are providing through your online pages:

1. Post good content more than once.
Social media is a fast paced environment. Facebook and Twitter don’t show everyone everything so your post might not get to all of your followers. And even if it does, they might miss it in their feeds. So when you post something really good, re-post several times over the course of a day or more. This will increase the odds for the content to be seen.

2. Pin a post to the top of your feed.
If you are fortunate enough to have regular visitors to your site or if you are promoting your site through a campaign, pin a great post to the top position to ensure that the visitor sees a provocative post as soon as they arrive. You can unpin after a time so it doesn’t become boring but pinning is a great way to hold something in priority position.

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Are You Talking to ME?

3/7/2016

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Does this question make you think of Robert DeNiro standing in front of the mirror practicing his tough guy role in Taxi Driver? Or does it bring to mind thoughts of Timon and Pumbaa in the Lion King and the scene below?
No matter which movie came to mind, the point should not be lost on those of us in the sales and marketing trenches!

As a sales pro, I have always believed that I must tailor my communication style to the style of my customer. If I am presenting to an expressive personality,  I will be sure to present the features and benefits in an emotional tone, focusing on quality and the brand image. If presenting to the CFO or procurement manager, I might lose their interest quickly if I don’t highlight the financial impact of the product, focusing on how we can meet their budget or improve their ROI. Much care is taken with pre-call preparation to ensure slides and all collateral elements along with presentation commentary are relevant to the style and temperament of the audience – my potential customer.

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Times Have Changed…Or Have They?

3/7/2016

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I am sure there are many reading this article today who can’t remember some of the tools of the selling trade of 20 years ago.  Thing like:
  • Pay phone booths you drive up to in your car, reach out your window to put in your quarter and push the buttons to place your call. If you were lucky, it wouldn’t be raining (or snowing) and you wouldn’t have to explain the dripping from your left blazer sleeve at your next appointment!
  • Car phones for those early adopters. They did help eliminate the pay phone stops but certainly didn’t reduce the cost of the call and required complete installation into your vehicle.
  • Pink slips that read “While you were out” neatly placed in a circular file on the receptionist’s desk with messages awaiting your return. By the time you got back to the office the buyer’s sense of urgency was gone and you would start over again with prospecting.
  • Thermal printed faxes curled up on your desk – sometimes they were actually legible!
  • A “Rolodex” with all your contacts names. Some of us OCD types had blanks that could be typed and then perfed out so they were nice and neat.
  • And yes, I did say typewriter! We used them prior to graduating to the word processor. It was a badge of honor to be able to type 70 WPM!
  • Client meetings were done over lunch or an occasional round of golf. Relationships were just as important then as now, our customers just had more time than in today’s world of shrinking budgets and less staff.
  • Letterhead, envelopes and stamps – we actually mailed information to our prospects back in those days. I call it early content marketing!
I can remember these things and I am so excited about the tools we have at our disposal today. Things like smart phones, CRM systems, email, social media, lead generating campaigns and smaller and faster laptops and tablets.

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5 Things to Put an End To The Bottomless              “To Do” List…   

3/7/2016

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In a very busy world where each of us is tasked with multiple responsibilities at home, at work, in our social groups and our communities it is easy to just keep adding to our “To Do” list until it becomes the bottomless pit. Finishing the day without completing what we intended to do is demotivating and causes us to feel we have failed somehow. That is just not a good way to feel at the end of a day that most of us should be proud of. Maybe we missed a few items on the list but we did get a lot done too.There are ways to master the list, prioritize your day and your tasks so that you accomplish the important priorities and end the day feeling good about how you spent your time, knowing that you made progress toward the important objectives in your life.

Here are some ideas that I have used to master my own bottomless to do list:

1 – Start each day with a NEW list!
I am a habitual user of a daily task list and have been for many years. I have tried to keep it on my smartphone or task list in Outlook. I have even bought into some of the apps that promise to help me keep my life more organized. None of them work for me as well as my notepad. I end each day by creating my list for tomorrow – which includes adding anything that I did not get done today. Then I close the book on today’s list. So tomorrow I am not faced with an incomplete list from yesterday and a defeated feeling to start off my morning.


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    Rhonda Perry

    25 year veteran sales and marketing pro. Growing sales is her passion. Whether you are managing the sales process or marketing efforts, ensuring that your efforts are targeted, consistent and relevant is her best advice to customers.  Don't leave your business to chance - be intentional about your sales strategy! 

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