“When you are able to tell the story of what you or your business does you will vastly increase the connection with the consumer.” - Gary Vaynerchuk

Do you consider yourself a good storyteller? When you meet someone for the first time and they ask you about your business, brand, or product, how do you respond?

The most successful examples of effective social media marketing, video marketing, and even traditional marketing campaigns occur when the consumer is able to latch on to a story that resonates on an emotional level for them.

In the video below from Harvard Business Review, Peter Guber, former CEO and chairman of Sony Pictures, and active chairman and CEO of the Mandalay Entertainment Group, explains why storytelling is so important [Read more...]

A recent article featured on Entrepreneur.com by author Ann Handley illustrates how businesses can generate more leads simply by increasing the ability and ease for users to share content across their social networks. I believe the advice given in the article can be extremely helpful to businesses regardless of their size, age, and target audience. Here are a few blurbs from the article that I want to point out to you:

“Because a clear way to generate and nurture leads is to create content: a blog and maybe an e-book and a Twitter stream and so on. But it’s pointless (and lonely!) to write a blog that gets no visitors and zero comments–and, consequently, affords no traction for your lead-gen efforts. Websites that facilitate sharing generate seven times more mentions online than those that don’t” (Source). 

In her article, Ann Handley uses a few recent studies to point out how powerful social share buttons can be, in relation to lead generation, when effectively placed on [Read more...]

I was lucky enough to have recently contributed to a new book by my good friend, New York Times best selling author and sales legend, Harvey Mackay. In the book, I was able to share my experience with selling online in a chapter titled,  Make The Internet  Your Sales Scalpel. Here is an excerpt of that chapter in which I provide answers to a number of questions asked by Harvey:

Some salespeople say: “The Internet is a fine tool for some folks, especially younger ones. Me? I’m of the old school.” Is that realistic: Can anyone in sales these days afford not to sell over the Internet?

It’s possible to sell without the help of the Internet, but it makes the salesperson’s job a lot tougher and less rewarding. The Internet is an “old school” selling adjunct, not a replacement . . . a reliable, low-cost prospecting tool to pre-qualify prospects.

Pre-qualifying prospects the old school, human-to-human way reduces productivity and invites personal rejection. The 21^st-century selling pro puts the burden of pre-qualifying on the Internet. 

Online pre-qualification tools such as assessments, surveys, and tutorials dramatically reduce customer acquisition costs and practically eliminate personal rejection. Sales professionals should have online pre-qualification systems in place. This screening lets them deal only with educated prospects during their initial human interaction.   [Read more...]

Every successful internet marketer knows that their most valuable asset is their list. Not their computer, not their products. Their list.

The principles of successful list building go back to the old adage that says, “Give a man a fish and he has a meal. Teach a man (or woman) how to fish, and he has a meal for a lifetime.”

Learning to fish (list build)

You profit for a lifetime when you know how to fish, or to properly assemble a list. [Read more...]