Personal Sales Videos – their time is here

9 Mar

Most everyone has an online avatar. Whether it’s your Facebook picture shown to your friends or your LinkedIn picture with your resume, everyone’s putting their mug shot online. With the introduction of YouTube, easy-to-use video editing software like iMovie and inexpensive video cameras like The Flip, it seems like everyone is taking the next step from pictures on the web to videos on the web.

And web videos are a natural extension of your sales and marketing efforts. It’s a great way to quickly and accurately get your compelling message across to a large number of customers and prospects. We’ve been exploring adding video to the Inquisix site not only to educate members but allow members to tell their own story to fellow members.

Since we don’t want our videos to win awards on “America’s Funniest Home Videos”, I sat down with Inquisix member Catie Foertsch of OurTownProductions to learn more. She talked about her 6 tips to making a better video. I’ll summarize them here but you should go to her website for the complete details.

Catie’s 6 tips to a better video

  • Start with a script
  • Be Yourself
  • Use a quality microphone
  • Use lots of good lighting
  • Frame your face well
  • End video with a call to action

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White Paper Available – Inquisix Referral Networking

4 Mar

Whether you’re a front-line sales rep hunting for new business, a consultant delivering solutions, or small business owner communicating with customers, board members and employees, it’s all about selling: selling to win new business or selling to retain customers in an increasingly competitive marketplace. So what’s the deal with the buzz around emerging Sales 2.0 solutions? Which approaches are best able to fill the pipeline? How can you integrate informal networking with the latest technologies?

This White Paper by Michael Kreppein, Inquisix’s Chief Sales Officer, explores the value of referral networking by using Inquisix to combine your in-person with your online networking.

Please download the White Paper in pdf format by clicking the link below.

InquisixWP
Inquisix White Paper on Referral Networking

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How To Integrate Your Online Networking with In-Person Events for Best Results

27 Feb

We had a great turnout to Friday Feb 20th’s Executive Club of Boston event hosted on BlitzTime. I was invited to talk on integrating your online networking with your in-person networking efforts.  While the audience on the 20th couldn’t see the attached presentation, it’s what I used to prompt me during my speech.

[flashvideo file=”wp-content/uploads/2009/02/inquisixonblitztimeflash.swf” /]

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Make It Relevant

17 Feb

Make it relevant

I’m a big fan of Kevin Sasser’s The Sales Wars blog.  He  must be really busy in his day job because he’s not posted in almost 2 months.  Well, my wait is over and as usual, I learned something and laughed at the same time.

Definitely read the full blog post.  After the funny analogy, Kevin writes about a colleague who is putting together an agenda for marketing to update the sales team.  The standard agenda is suggested:

  • Our company overview
  • What we see happening in the industry
  • Our “vision”
  • Our unique approach

To which Kevin figuratively sticks his fingers in his mouth at the thought of listening to all that.  What struck me is that the sales team is probably doing the same thing to the prospect!  You are polite while marketing pitches you but you’re secretly daydreaming or reading your BlackBerry under the table.  Wanna bet your prospect is doing the same as  you pitch?  Kevin suggested the following agenda for marketing.  I suggest you follow the same agenda when selling to prospects:

  • Why you are in my office taking up my time
  • My problem that you can solve for me
  • How you will solve the problem in clear, concise, concrete terms
  • The benefit that you will deliver to me that your competitor can’t

As I get reminded at home, it’s not about me, it’s about what’s important to them!

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Inquisix Presentation and Networking Event – Fri Feb 20th

5 Feb

Brent Trethewey of the Executive Club of Boston has invited me to speak on Friday February 20th at 8.00am ET to his group. The topic of the discussion is “How To Integrate Your Online Networking with In-Person Events for Best Results”

Come join us by phone!

speed-networking

Brent is a member of Inquisix and runs a “speed” networking event every Friday. The concept is pretty cool, I’ve attended a bunch of his meetings. Instead of meeting face-to-face every Friday, he’s using a technology from BlitzTime that allows participants to connect via phone with up to 6 other executives, all in 45 minutes. Each week, Brent invites an expert to talk and then the participants get connected with each other to talk for 6 minutes. After your 6 minutes is up, you are connected with another participant. Hence, the “speed” in his networking.

So please come join us! It’s best to be online while on the phone.

At the moment, there’s only a US-based number to call into. I’m talking to the BlizTime founders to add a European number so our Inquisix members there can join us for the next event.

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The Highly Engaged Referral Survey

3 Feb

John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing has a blog post today regarding the Highly Engaged Referral and the level of participation the person getting referred to is in the referral process. Obviously the higher the participation, the better the referral!

survey

John is asking people to take a quick 5 question survey on referrals. Why not respond?

PS - thanks to wickedphobica for the picture

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Good Cold Calling Leads to Referrals

22 Jan

I’m a big fan of reading Geoffrey James’ blog, Sales Machine.  He gets to be edgier and more controversial than his articles in Selling Power magazine.

He posted a great letter from one of his readers on the value of cold calling.  The real value in cold calling is disqualifying prospects, much like panning thru dirt to find diamonds.  I’ve posted on the value of cold calling in a previous Inquisix post.

The commenter’s conclusion on the value of cold calling?

coldcallingreferral

Same as what I said; the benefit of cold calling is….referrals!

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3 Networking Must-Do's

16 Jan

I was in Westboro, MA earlier this week attending the Corridor Nine Chamber of Commerce‘s networking night.  The event was very well attended by local businesses with over 350 attendees mingling amongst the food, drinks and violin trio.  Very nice, very professional.  Best of all, I caught up with 2 Inquisix members, Rick and Brigitte.  Both knew the Inquisix story and articulated our benefits to other Chamber members.  Thanks!

Now that it’s been a few days since the event, I’m reminded again that many people attend these networking events without a plan.  Do they just show up for the free hors d’oeuvres and open bar?

Three (and only three) MUST-do’s at networking events:

  • Show Up – A surprising number of people attend these events and aren’t prepared.  Showing up means more than arriving.  Did you bring enough business cards to hand out?  Did you bring a pen to jot notes on the back of the cards you receive?  Can you articulate your message in 5 seconds?  There’s too much noise to get a 30 second elevator pitch across so get your message down to 5 seconds.  But the ones who had their 5 second pitch down?  Those people I remember!
  • Follow-up – Even more surprising is the number of people who exchanged cards and never follow up.  Again, why bother showing up?  Why not a simple email, “I enjoyed meeting you at the Chamber event last night and hearing what you do.  I had a chance to look at your website this morning.  Look forward to connecting to you at a future event.  All the best.”  That message is appropriate even if you don’t think the other person can help you.  Because you just never know when someone you’ve met will reach out to you.  Again, the people with the best 5 seconds all reached out to me later this week.
  • Give to Get – Still a shame with all the networking tips freely available on the web that people forget that giving begets getting.  The most active man in the room was Rick.  He spent his time introducing people in the room to each other.  If they had trouble articulating their message, he helped them.  If they forgot the first step in following up (collecting business cards), he gently offered his as a reminder.  Did Rick spend any time telling people what he did?  No, he led by example.

3 simple to-do’s.  No, 3 simple must-do’s.

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Networking is for Mentoring, too

14 Jan

I read just a great article today about 6 brothers who are all successful IT sales reps in the Boston area.  You can read the full article at MassHighTech and it’s well worth the read.  They said that the main reason for their success was the mentoring they all did amongst themselves over Sunday dinner.  They did it themselves because they found that “…many companies put less emphasis on mentorship and training than they should.”

MassHighTech 6 Murphy Brothers

The brothers not only mentor each other but take pride in mentoring the new hires working for them.

Do you have a mentor?
Who are you mentoring?

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Creating a Referral Machine

7 Jan

John Jantsch has a great blog post about creating a systematic process for creating referrals that everyone in the company should be using.

You can find the link here.  I don’t see anything dramatically unique in his steps but they’re all important and it’s surprising how many people forget some of the steps.  Of course his big reminder is to “make giving referrals a business strategy…best way to get is to give.”

He closes with “…everybody’s in marketing…” to which I’d reply, “…everybody’s in sales!”

Happy Referring!

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