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In Get Clients Now!, author and Master Certified Coach C.J. Hayden demonstrates how independent professionals, consultants, and coaches can improve their marketing and networking skills. By offering a customizable 28-day program, Hayden empowers professionals to reach new prospective clients and win their business. Written in the style of a cookbook, Get Clients Now! provides readers with a series of innovative ingredients, strategies, steps, and recipes for success.

What You Need to Know About Marketing

Marketing has a somewhat negative reputation in modern society—it is often thought of as an attempt to get people to buy things they neither need nor want. This, however, is based upon a misconception that marketing and sales are synonyms. Not only are the two concepts not the same thing, they are actually in many ways the opposite of one another. As Simon Middleton explains in What You Need to Know About Marketing, sales begins when a company has a product it needs to sell to a customer, while marketing begins when a company attempts to understand what the customer wants or needs to buy. It is a matter of learning what those wants and needs are and how they can best be satisfied. Therefore, the customer’s satisfaction lies at the very heart of marketing.

A company’s sales compensation plan represents one of its most significant drivers of performance and growth. Nevertheless, too often senior executives fail to recognize critical incongruities between sales strategies and the organization’s greater goals. In What Your CEO Needs to Know About Sales Compensation, Mark Donnolo identifies the four major competencies and 16 related disciplines that direct a company’s “Revenue Roadmap” and enables profitable growth. He shares insights from a range of experts from C-level executives from Fortune 1000 companies to the “foot soldiers” on the front lines of sales. The book concludes with a set of six “Report Cards” for measuring the effectiveness of sales compensation programs.


 

Outlaw by Trent Leyshan is for salespeople who are trying to navigate the ever-changing commercial world with fewer resources and more demands on their time. Changing technology and consumers have led to major changes in sales strategies, but many salespeople have not evolved to meet today’s new challenges. Those who recognize the need to change often do not have the tools necessary to bring about that change. Sales leaders, or outlaws, have mastered the techniques and tools needed to succeed in today’s sales environment.

Networking: Business Talk for "Getting on with People"

Looking for meaningful networking opportunities? It is essential to focus on on in-person networking events, rather than social networking sites, as sites such as LinkedIn are simply a step or conduit to securing a face-to-face meeting.

Furthermore, sales representatives are warned to not be fooled into thinking that just because they are “connected” to hundreds of people online that they have a real relationship with those people, let alone a relationship that would lead to any sort of actual business. Alternatively, actual in-person networking with strangers can be a very worthwhile endeavor.

Not only does it pay to practice conversational skills and the ability to empathize with total strangers, but by showing genuine interest in other people, an opportunity for locating a new target or lead may materialize organically in conversation. More often than not, however, networking events are formal, structured events.

Salespeople should avoid general networking affairs and instead focus on events that include members of a specific target market. For example, Person A has a company whose services benefit lawyers. Therefore, he attends those meetings where lawyers or those who do training at law firms are sure to be in attendance.

One of the biggest benefits to networking only within target markets is that with each attendance a person can raise their profile and be noticed. Getting noticed is also why it is suggested that it is important to not just attend, but also speak, at these events. Standing up in front of one’s target market is the best way to stand out and be remembered.

This article is based on the book "How to Be Great at the Stuff You Hate." The book summary is available online at Business Book Summaries.

Fire, Flow, and Future

Today's business managers benefit from an unprecedented number of quality improvement tools, such as lean manufacturing, re-engineering, Total Quality Management, and Six Sigma. Yet despite substantial investments, many companies continue to see slow improvement in the quality of their products, services, and processes.

Management is routinely troubled by questions such as "Why are my sales dropping off?"; "What can I do about excessive scrap?" and "How do I reduce high turnover?" How they decide to answer those questions has a measurable impact on both quality and the bottom line.

LEO can help organizations find ideal solutions to these questions not because it is a better management tool than the likes of Six Sigma, but because it causes a shift in every person's frame of mind, affecting how they approach problems and how they decide which actions to take. LEO is a broad methodology that transforms how existing management tools are used, and it operates best when used by people at all levels in an organization.

While designing LEO, there are three scenarios with the most room for quality improvement: Fire, Flow, and Future. In a Fire deployment, LEO is used to solve an isolated, often unexpected problem that needs immediate attention and an accompanying change in quality -- for example, when a food manufacturer's product is suddenly and inexplicably underweight.

A Flow deployment seeks to improve quality in the operational processes of an organization--for example, a hospital's procedure for hiring nurses or a manufacturer's process for creating an RFQ (a request for quote). In a Future deployment, quality is built into the process of innovation.

All three of these scenarios are focused on improving an existing product or service or developing an entirely new one. Regardless of the type of deployment, a LEO team should be appointed to follow same three-step process of Listen, Enrich, and Optimize.

While the composition of the team will vary by deployment, in general it should be led by someone from management, and team members should be chosen based on who the scenario effects and requires input from. No deployment can succeed unless the executive cadre is actively supporting it each and every day.

This article is based on the book "Power of LEO." The book summary is available online at Business Book Summaries.

It's the Sale, Stupid.

Salesmanship should be the first, not the last, step in the marketing process. Marketing should lead to sales.

Otherwise, it's just a waste of time and money.

Sales should not be removed from the marketing process, as it is in many companies. Certain steps should be taken so that a company or a person becomes a customer or a client.

These include:

Developing a strategy for winning new business based on value proposition. You have to know that one reason why people should do business with you, and not with your competition.

Let your market know. So you have determined your value proposition. Now let them know every way you can.

Let them love you. Court your market. Let them fall in love with you. Overcome barriers to sales by lowering prices, offering additional services, extending warranties, or giving trial period.

Moreover, don't put the burden of a sale on a prospective client. That's your job.

Ignore the competition and start from scratch.

Never start the marketing process by what the competition does. That limits creativity.

Rather, like Albert Einstein, "think outside the box." Use your imagination to achieve results.

Step beyond existing models and be creative.

This article was based on the book "Your Marketing Sucks" by Mark Stevens. The book summary is available online at Business Book Summaries.