Summer Prospecting Worksheet

Author:

Published: 2013 05 16

Read More In: Industry Shifts

Is prospecting part of your “sales diet”?

A big challenge that successful professionals in the promotional industry have is they are successful… they have built a solid business with some loyal customers.  As a byproduct, 100% of their time and attention is focused on development and retention of these customers.

The big But…

You’re good, but are you different?

Author: Brad White

Published: 2013 05 08

Read More In: Industry Shifts Technology

In the past decade, new terms have become important in the business community – optimization, viral, crowd-sourcing, data-mining, etc.  One term in particular gets thrown around quite a lot – differentiation. 

Businesses and individuals focus on ways to differentiate themselves from competition, seeking to create a distinct identity for their brand.  As promotional marketing professionals, our job is to help our clients produce promotional campaigns that distinguish their brand among a sea of products and services so that their customers will know, understand, and participate in their agenda.  But how do we, as promotional product Distributors, differentiate ourselves in our own crowded marketplace? 

With estimates ranging from 18,000 to 40,000 Distributor sales people, how do we show our customers that we are different from everyone else?  How can they tell us apart?

Q1 Review

Author:

Published: 2013 04 04

Read More In: Industry Shifts

The quarter is over and we are well into Q2 ‘13.  Before you close the books on the first quarter of 2013, do a quick analysis on how you did.

What were the big wins and losses? What happened that you didn’t expect and how did you handle it?

Last year we shared our business planning guide to help you put together a plan for 2013. Take a look at your 2013 business plan and see how Q1 measured up.

Here is a quick Q1 Review template to help you get going.

$100 Cash Challenge

Author: Jason Black

Published: 2013 03 26

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Timing is everything… our world is changing extremely fast - 7 years ago Twitter didn’t exist, 5 years ago the Smartphone didn’t exist, and just 3 years ago the iPad didn’t exist…all of which have been transcendent on the way people transact. Do you honestly believe the promotional marketing industry is exempt from change? You know it as well as I do this industry has failed to move the needle and proactively take advantage of the technology available to give you a competitive advantage.

Whats one word to describe you?

Author:

Published: 2013 03 19

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If your clients were to describe your business in a single word, what would it be?

Whatever the word or phrase may be, it's good to put yourself through this exercise and learn as much as you can about your business to continually find ways to improve. Learning bears fruit.