Newsletter for 4Q02
Devoted entirely to "Selling In A Down Market" (this material is presented in our "Relationship Selling" program)

Selling In A Down Market

There are a lot of opportunities in a down market.  Most customers are looking for ways to reduce costs and there are often personnel changes that sever existing relationships allowing something NEW to be introduced. 

- Vertical Networking
Look to your suppliers or landlords to help you by using your product/service or to help you land new customers . Ask your customers and past customers to help you sell your product/service to their customers, their suppliers or their associates.

Examples include: financial service companies can get you market leads; you can get advertising money from product providers; installers can get leads from wholesalers;  your landlord can provide a list of his other tenants; tax attorneys can ask for referrals; food services companies could do catering for cafeteria users

- Linkage Expansion
Call contacts at existing accounts when they move to another company.  Use employees to identify leads where they can help . Use family and friends to tee up leads. Government officials that you voted for can help. Trade or volunteer association officials can be helpful Club memberships such as Rotary, Masons, Optimists, Golf, Alumni, Church, etc.           Existing employees from other countries can help get started in their homeland (Canada, eh)

Hold the line on price

Add services, add value, add anything but hold the

price

Reevaluate your assumptions

There may be opportunities where you used to

think there were not

Please page down to see past newsletters

Offer More Value

Offer value that doesn�t cost you much

                  Extended warranties

                  Scheduled shipments

                  Re-engineering

Do more problem solving

Problem solving that is very focused

- We can help you machine stainless steel

- Don't panic, a big problem is a big opportunity

- Write down a definition for a problem, define it in very specific terms

- A well-defined problem is half way solved

- Gather evidence, some is good, more is better

- Study the evidence carefully

- Get the customer to provide input

- Have as many customer personnel involved as possible     

- Be sure to put down all the broad issues that normally surround a problem

- Look at the history of the problem...also the future

- Brain-storm solutions  (Mind Mapping)

- Write down all the possible solutions, no idea is a bad idea, no judgements here!

- Estimate resources and costs with each solution

- Consider the pros and cons of the alternatives

- Select one solution in a participative way

- Lay out an action plan

- Choose the easy steps or a reduced version of your solution first

- Be certain everyone agrees with the choices

- Assign responsibilities in a participative manner

- Develop commitment dates with those responsible

- Implement your plan

- Document, Document, Document, keep written records of all activities and results

- Keep samples along the way

- Make oral presentations to report regularly to everyone involved

- In the end write down what was learned and how the lesson can help avoid other problems

- Send out written documents to everyone involved

Follow up on all leads both old and new, 70% of leads are not followed through

Dig into old accounts that stopped doing business with you years ago

Share success stories within the organization

Use team selling on critical opportunities to give it your best shot

Initiate drives into new markets that are close to you geographically. Most customers would rather buy from a company that is close to them

Set up auto contacts to communicate more widely. Auto-faxing with WinFaxPro and Auto-Emailing with Outlook. Do publicity stunts and write articles for trade magazines

Work harder by putting in more hours doing prospecting work on the phone. Do the paper work after hours or on the weekends

Work on the stuff that�s worth working on
Write down the high priority work activities and set minimum daily times to work on them

Up-sell and cross sell with every order.
Up-selling involves having the customer buy more or bigger/better items.  �Some customers buy two of those so they have a backup.�   Cross selling involves getting a customer to buy another complimentary or supplementary product with the 
product he is buying.  Sometimes this can work as a form of discount.   You say to the customer: �We cannot lower the price on the item you ordered but we can sell you this "obsolete" or "new" product that is worth $$$� 

Newsletter for 3Q02

Time Correction For You PC's Clock

Go to http://www.worldtimeserver.com and choose "automatic clock sync" to download the software that will automatically correct your PC's clock once every 24 hours.

Please page down to see past newsletters

Bandwidth Speed Test

Here is where you can test bandwidth speed on your internet connection. 
http://www.bandwidthplace.com/speedtest. 

We checked our DSL and found it was working at 584 KBits or about 10 times faster than a standard 56K modem.

World Holidays

We have found a file with all holidays for all countries thru 2006 to replace the holiday file in Microsoft Outlook. There is a site which has a collection of tools for the Microsoft Outlook Calendar folder.

Go to http://www.slipstick.com/addins/calendar.htm
and then "Date Lists" and then "Holiday List"

Lead Handling

We can help with merge/purging, standardizing and distributing leads that you get from trade shows such as IMTS. You can simply send us the card swipes, business cards and e-files and we will do the rest.

Newsletter for 2Q02

NANPA For Area Code Changes:

You can find all the telephone area code changes to fix your database at the NANPA (North American Numbering Plan Administration) web site: http://www.nanpa.com.  Give us a call if you have any trouble.

Facts On Internet Users

From Thomas Register
--------------------
- 91 percent of buyers surveyed reported contacting suppliers' websites 
for information in place of phone calls this year. 
- 90 percent of buyers expect to find pricing information, order 
information, shipping information, guarantees, component capabilities,
catalogs, size, dimensions and drawings/pictures online.
- 80 percent of buyers said they are likely to consider another 
supplier if they do not have the information they need available 
immediately.
- 77 percent of buyers surveyed indicated that suppliers who provide 
detailed information about their products or services online "show me
they want my business" 
- 66 percent of engineers surveyed said they would pick a new supplier
if they provided the CAD information online in the desired format they 
needed for a project. Source: Thomas Register.

Please page down to see past newsletters

Palm With Inventory, Pricing, Weather, News, Maps

If you have a Palm Pilot or equivalent you can set it up to store web page content including maps, weather and the text of entire web pages. You could put your inventory or price list on a web page and then your field sales people could download it to their Palms. The Palm does not have to be a wireless device. All you do is go to AvantGo.com and install the Free service and software. Once you are set up with this Free service you will be able synch your Palm with Outlook on your PC and the software will automatically go to the site and reproduce it on your Palm..

Microsoft Access OLE Error

If you are losing logos, signatures or clip art when you print Microsoft Access forms or reports it could be related to Norton Antivirus. Give us a call for the work around.

Fax To Email For Free

Lengthy faxes with many pages that would tie up your fax machine or a ton of resumes in response to a job posting can be faxed to a free fax number that will convert them to email. You can also use this as a means of converting printed words to "text" that can then be cut and pasted into Word. The service is available from www.j2.com. Another service that charges a monthly fee is www.efax.com.

Newsletter for 1Q02

Bill Gates said:

Bill Gates, in his book, "BUSINESS AT THE SPEED OF THOUGHT", says that companies should move all of their forms to the internet so that labor is greatly reduced and paper is eliminated. Employees and customers can enter data on-line and the data can be put directly into a database for appending to an existing application. Further, the forms can be changed instantly and can take a lot more information than paper forms. We just saved a client's a full-time employee by developing a web form that customers fill out and that the employee no longer has to type.  Bill Gates said: "Start everything in digital format.  Digital format allows emailing, sorting, summarizing and all kinds of analysis."

China

John was just hired to speak in China. He gave a two-day seminar on "Relationship Selling" in Shanghai on December 27th and 28th.

As a result of that program we now have new partners in China and John got to see how progressive and modern this city is.

Free Contact Service NotifyUs.com has introduced a free web-to-phone message service whereby a web visitor can send a message directly to your phone and you can respond to it.  The service converts a typed message to "voice" and then dials your number and gives you the message.  The service is free for calls sent anywhere in the USA.

Palm Applications

Palm Pilot users and programmers should take note that AppForge.com has software to allow writing applications for the Palm and PocketPC.  If you want to outsource development for the Palm or PocketPC, we would be delighted to help.

"New" Negotiations Excellence

We are now offering our negotiations program as a standard course available to the public with classes scheduled in both the Detroit and Cleveland metropolitan areas. The course is called "Negotiation Excellence". It will help sales people meet today's challenges by giving them practical and useful techniques they can use to help hold the line on price. Class dates in Cleveland are April 19th and September 27th. Class dates in Detroit are April 12th and September 20th.