Wal-Mart has announced a new contest
aimed at Entrepreneurs and Small Businesses
called Get on the shelf.

This is an American Idol type competition.
If you already have a Wal-mart appropriate product,
it requires nothing more
(no entry fee)
than a video.

Why is Wal-Mart doing this?

As per Chris Bolte,
vice president of @WalmartLabs,
“At the end of the day,
we’re hoping to uncover products
that we haven’t been looking at
and give consumers a voice
about what Wal-Mart carries.”

This is a GREAT opportunity
if Wal-Mart is part of your world domination plan.
No guts, no glory!
Make that video and enter today!

Today, if you’re in retail,
you’ll see last minute shoppers.
These shoppers
are often procrastinators.

Why do people procrastinate?

According to Dr. Pamela Wiegartz,
there are three main reasons

- they fear failure
- they fear success
or
- they’re perfectionists.

A few years ago,
I went to the mall on Christmas Eve.
Every time I looked at something,
that item would be swamped
with other shoppers.
I had shoppers ask me
“Would I like this?”
or
“What would I buy?”

These shoppers didn’t want
to make the buying decision.
They wanted me to make it for them.

So how do you market to the procrastinator?
You use recommendations.
You market the product as the “hot” gift.
(you should be able to share with shoppers
what your hottest selling item is)
You have staff say “This is what I would buy.”
You take the buying decision,
the blame for wrong or right or imperfect purchases,
out of the shopper’s hands.

Seth Godin has a wonderful article
on the appeal of the hot toy.

Sales and Marketing
have always been closely related.
Promotion should drive awareness.
Awareness should drive sales.

Today, however, the lines
have truly blurred.

3Forward has an excellent post
on how more and more customers
are researching purchases on their own.

“Proof of how pervasive
this has become was published
by the Marketing Leadership Council
earlier this year.
Their survey of 1,900 companies
found that B2B buyers across multiple industries
accomplish up to 60%
of the “buying process” on their own
– before ever needing
or wishing to speak to a sales representative.”

Buyers do this, of course,
by Googling the information.

Which means
salespeople should be consulted
when websites are designed,
a task that marketing normally leads.

Yep, where marketing ends
and sales begins
(or vice versa)
is even fuzzier.

Your sales department
HAS to work with your marketing department.
This is not a nice-to-do.
This is a has-to-happen.

There’s an unwritten rule in romance writing.
If an author gives a character a name,
the character is important.
Readers should care about the character.
They take note of
what the character is doing.

It works in romance writing
because it mirrors real life.
If we know someone’s name,
that someone becomes more important to us.

Recently,
tellers at a local bank
started addressing customers
by their names.
Complaints magically decreased.

As Scott Ginsberg shares
“If your customers wore nametags,
would you give them better service?
Sure you would.
Names reduce the distance between people.”

Your customer’s name is a powerful tool
and surprisingly,
it is not used that often.
I’m always impressed
when a salesperson uses my name.

Find out your customer’s name
and then use it.

Most of us work well with targets.
Salespeople are no different.

So how many sales calls
should we be making
to achieve our goals?

According to Michael Pedone,
“If you want to make
or even break your sales goals,
60 sales calls per day
(including callbacks from prospects)
and or 3 hours of talk time
(to prospects, not your mom)
has been the best winning formula
I’ve found to help me outsell
my co-workers
and outwork my competition.”

Make those 60 calls
quality calls.
Do your research.
Know how your product adds value.
Make those meaningful, sales winning calls.

In November’s Cineplex Magazine
(yes, I DO take time off
to go to the movies
once or twice a year),
rising actor Henry Caville,
often dubbed
the “Unluckiest Man in Hollywood”
due to the roles he has lost,
talks about his work schedule.

“On Tudors
I had to start training [for Immortals]
even though I had heard nothing
from the producers.
I was getting up at
around four in the morning,
training for two hours
before Tudors started shooting,
shooting a 14-hour day on Tudors,
going to bed
and repeating five days a week.
That was tricky.”

Henry Cavill was working 2 hours a day
on top of a full time job
for the chance, the CHANCE,
he might be given a role.

How many hours a day
are you putting in
to secure your future sales?

I once worked in
a HUGE telecommunications company.
One of my coworkers
was grumping about
how his job was meaningless.
I piped up and told him
he was changing the world.

“How am I changing the world?”
he muttered.
“I’m selling phones.”

“You’re not selling phones,”
I pointed out.
“You’re making it easier
for people to talk to each other,
to communicate.
Wars have been prevented
with more communication.”

The Sales Blog has an absolutely wonderful post
on why sales or any other position you take
can be meaningful work.

As The Sales Blog states…

“The only thing
that makes work meaningful
is that it makes some contribution
to helping other human beings.
That’s it.”

Before I send out an important email,
I often run the text through
a readability test.

Why?

Because if the email is too complex,
it won’t be understood
and if it is not understood,
it definitely won’t be
acted upon.

As Steve Roesler states…

“Truth comes in sentences.
B_ llS_it comes in paragraphs.
If you can’t say it with a noun, verb, and object,
you aren’t clear about your thought.”

Intelligence is communicated
through the use of small words.

Keep it simple.

I have 25 stories published
under one of my pen names.
However,
when I recently published a story
with a larger, new-to-me publisher,
readers viewed me as a brand new writer
and I was…
to them.

I have to prove myself
all over again.
I have to prove I can write
and provide entertaining stories
and produce multiple stories.

The same thing happened
with my first releases on Amazon
… and All Romance eBooks
… and Barnes.

One of the reasons
we explore new distribution channels
is to reach more prospects.
These prospects might have never heard
of our products or our companies.

We’re new once again
so we should treat this new distribution channel
sort of like a do-over launch,
same branding
but (hopefully) without the mistakes of the first launch.

I’m a fan of newspapers and magazines.
I think they can add value.
I think they can serve a purpose.

However,
I also think they can’t afford to make mistakes,
and they definitely shouldn’t piss off
over 50% of the population.

Which is what The Economist has potentially done
by publishing the most sexist article
I’ve read in a magazine in a long, long time
( The Art Of Selling ).

Not only is it severely sexist
but the article sounds so old fashioned
and out-of-date,
that it makes me doubt
all of the other
well-researched, modern articles.

THAT is how fragile a brand is.
One one-page article can destroy
years of brand building.

Guard your brand.
Protect your brand.
Oh, and if you think something sounds sexist,
it probably IS.