Business Management - Marketing/Sales

Using certain key words—in sales letters, in advertisements, during sales calls—can help you nudge your prospects toward a sale. Thanks to decades of trial-and-error by past marketers, we now know which words are most likely to inspire prospect action.

Two words marketers hate to hear are—opt out. While it is inevitable that some will opt out of receiving/reading your marketing materials, there are three things you can do to greatly decrease the number who do.

Before I went to work in the printing industry, I was a marketing manager. Now that I manage a printer’s marketing and sales departments, I hear sob stories about how hard it is to get appointments with marketing directors.

I wrote a blog a while back about whether there is a place in our industry for a version of the Groupon business model. The response was mostly a qualified “NO!” Here’s what we can and should take from the Groupon model—absolutely ridiculous customer service.

When your client has budget concerns, mentioning the words premium paper seems like a death sentence. But clients might not be paper savvy, with less and less paper education available to them, so it’s up to you to guide them.

Lately, I’ve heard myself say some things that qualify me for the “old” label. I think the turning point came recently as I was reviewing a letter that a young salesperson was intending to send to a prospect.

Reviewing a sampling of the 12,000 print buyer surveys revealed that speed and accuracy are mentioned consistently when praising or complaining about their buying experiences. Their jobs are on the line and you must make them look like heroes—to their bosses, peers, staff and customers.

The Rolling Stones were wrong: Time is not on your side. But I am in this week’s Short Attention Span Webinar.

With so many emails tumbling into your prospects’ inboxes, grabbing their attention in the subject line is more important than ever. The Four U’s principle—a time-tested formula for writing effective headlines—can help your email get read. When writing an email subject line, ensure it is useful, unique, ultra-specific and urgent.

Complaints about not generating enough sales conversions abound. These companies are looking for radical—and often quick—answers to their decreasing-sales problem. Perhaps you find yourself in the same position and are asking what can I do about it?