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When you’re closing more sales and making your sales numbers, selling can be one of the most rewarding and fulfilling professions in the world. But when sales are down, and prospects aren’t calling you back, you may find yourself doubting yourself and taking it personally. So let’s take a look at what it takes to keep yourself motivated to bring in more clients.

There are 3 steps to follow in the process of gaining more clients and growing your business.

1.  Prospecting and developing new clients.

2.  Getting more involved with current clients in order to gain referrals and more business.

3.  Contacting the highest-level decision makers to get larger business deals.

As a business owner, we understand the importance of achieving these objectives. Why then do so many business owners have difficulty getting beyond the first step? It seems as much as we are motivated to achieve sales success, there may be a stronger need to avoid the possible rejection and failure we may experience when calling on prospects and clients.

Let’s talk about how rejection plays a role in sales success. Fear of failure and rejection can cause you to lose your enthusiasm, your confidence and your initiative. If you experience rejection, it can damage your ego. If you take the negativity or unkindness personally, you might become disappointed, depressed, and defensive.

There are three reasons we might take rejection personally. Each of them relate to the 3 objectives. They are:

*  Frequency: It takes at least five times or more to reach people. If you’ve been calling prospects all week and they’re not getting back to you, you may feel frustrated, discouraged, and unsure of yourself. It’s hard not to take it personally and start to think you’re doing something wrong.

*  Emotional Involvement: You’ve been doing business with a client for a period of time. You spent a great deal of time cultivating the relationship. You want to ask them for referral business but you’re afraid you’re putting them on the spot or that they will say no. You’re concerned this might jeopardize the relationship you’ve worked so hard to create.

*  Perceived Importance: You may tend to call on people you’re most comfortable with. You may hesitate to call higher into a company as you feel you lack the experience and confidence to carry on a conversation with a seasoned high-level executive. If you believe you have little in common with the CEO of a company, chances are you won’t call on him or her.

If we believe we need to be accepted by others to feel good about ourselves, then we will be vulnerable to failure and rejection. Successful people look at failure as an opportunity to learn and grow from it because their self-esteem is based on their own sense of self-worth. They believe they can gain more from failure than success and understand every mistake is a learning experience and grow from it. This is why—whether they fail or succeed or are loved or rejected—they always feel good about themselves.

So what’s key to dealing positively with rejection? Five words sum it up…“Do not take it personally.” Things happen. People get busy. Customers have bad days. The economy goes up and down. You have a choice. You can take it personally and make those events an excuse for failure, or you can work on the four things that you have under your control: Your beliefs, your attitude, your emotions, and your performance. Take care of those four and the results will follow.

The next time you have a thought like “I can’t ask for referrals because I don’t want my client to think I’m too pushy,” change that thought to “My client is very satisfied with my service and is happy to refer me to others with similar needs!” Changing your thoughts is the first step towards changing your belief; however, it doesn’t stop there. Start practice saying it aloud to yourself and sharing it with others. When you do that, it will become more real for you.

ASSIGNMENT:

*  Select one of the 3 objectives you’d like to have a breakthrough in:

1.  Prospecting and developing new clients.

2.  Getting more involved with clients to gain referrals or additional business.

3.  Contacting higher-level decision makers or getting larger orders.

*  Take a 3” x 5” index card. On one side of the card, write all the negative thought(s) you have about reaching that objective. Tell the truth, don’t hold back.

*  On the other side of each of the index card reverse the negative thought and write positive thoughts. This is the beginning of changing your negative belief.

*  Begin to practice changing that thought by saying the new thought aloud to yourself and sharing with others.

*  Write down the action steps to take and take one action step towards reaching the objective today!

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In my life I have literally collected thousands of business cards. When I look through them, I hardly remember the person or business at all! Should a business card not reflect who you are and what your business does?

A proper business card is the first piece of marketing literature that is handed out. It should definitely have your name, address, email address and phone number. But I think that most business cards should have more information. Most are very poorly designed.

How could we improve on the basic business card? I was thinking about this and I came up with some suggestions for the back of your business card:

1) Hard to Find Places – a mini map giving directions to your premises

2) Takeaways – a miniature menu – remember the 80/20 rule – top sellers only!

3) What about a testimonial?

4) Retail Outlet – what about a discount on presentation of the card?

Here is another great idea for the back of a business card:

Print:

We met at…

On…

For…

What we discussed…

Referrals…

What about the front?

1) Why not add your picture?

2) Use full colour printing

3) Get a Professional to design it

I firmly believe that all business cards should have a photograph of the person especially now that they are so cheap to produce in full colour. Nobody will ever forget who you are if your picture is on the card!

Your business card is probably the first marketing material you hand out to somebody you meet for the first time. It should create a good impression and be a precursor to a further meeting or conversation by phone.

Business cards are never going to do the selling for you, but they need to transfer the right impression of who you are and what your business does. For this you need to use full colour printing and stay away from the standard black and white cards.

I would advise people to stay away from laminated cards. Many people jot down a short note on the back of the card to help them remember who you are and what was said. They cannot write on a laminated card!

Finally make sure your business card is durable. Pay slightly more for a thicker card. If you can get a cheaper business card for $90 a 1000 and a more expensive better quality of business card for $150 per 1000… and you only hand out 200 business cards a year… go for the better quality one and make sure you hand out a 1000 in the next 12 months!

How many business cards have you received that immediately said to you “I am not going to do business with that person”? Most of them are probably printed in black and white and on thin cards. Some do not even tell you what that persons business does!

Most people underestimate how valuable a business card really is. When you think about the costs involved it really should be used more effectively. Make your business card stand out so that people are more likely to remember you and get in touch.

How you pitch your company determines whether you get the right partners, favorable financing terms, super executives, and best shot at success

If you’re a South Park fan, you’ll remember the episode called the “Underpants Gnomes,” in which gnomes have built a business based on stealing underpants from the residents of South Park. When the kids finally catch them and ask why they are doing this, the gnomes say it’s all part of their business plan. “What’s your plan, exactly?” the kids ask. One of the gnomes fires up a PowerPoint presentation to outline their three-phase approach. Slide No. 1 says “Steal Underpants.” Slide No. 2 is blank. Slide No. 3 says “Profit!”

I cannot stress how many business pitches I’ve seen like this, where Phase One is “create widget,” Phase Three is “profit!” and the crucial Phase Two is a complete unknown. See the info on my pitch critique worksheet at the end of this column to make sure your pitch is complete.

Let’s say you have a capital acquisition strategy and an advisory board to boost your credibility. You need two more things: a sizzling pitch and a variety of funding sources. In this column we’ll nail your financing pitch, and I’ll address financing sources down the road.

Roping Them In
I’m assuming you’ve already created a killer business plan, which will yield your executive summary and financing pitch. Your business plan will be about 20 pages, covering all aspects of your business. Put in the hours to make it perfect, because you’ll be repurposing the business plan’s content in sales presentations, marketing collateral and white papers, recruiting pitches, and your Web site. Your executive summary is a two-to-five-page bottom-line version of your business plan, a riveting bulletin from the front line that primes investors to read on.

Few people will want to pore over the whole plan—this is why you’ve got to rope them in with those first pages and establish that you’re a savvy, trustworthy person with a substantial idea before you lay out all the details. The financing pitch is 10 to 15 PowerPoint slides extracted from the executive summary. This is the distillation of your business, which you’ll design to deliver in about 20 minutes for attention-span-challenged people. You’ll likely need the pitch in document form, too.

As a former venture capitalist, I’ve read tottering towers of financing pitches and project proposals. Often the pitches were for products or services that no one truly needed, or projects that weren’t cost-justified, or worse yet, fabulous ideas presented poorly. To stand out, your pitch needs to be concise, compelling, and complete.

1. Be Concise
A concise pitch provides a simple explanation for why your business or project is a great idea, and how you’ll execute the steps to pull it off. The pitch must explain your company in such a crisp way that the money contingent won’t be able to put it down. You must convince them that you have a sound execution strategy and pragmatic tactics for making your vision a reality.

The key questions financiers want you to answer are:

* Have you hired the right people?

* Can you build/deliver your product or service? Will it fly?

* Are you chasing big enough markets and can you reach them?

* How much will it cost us to build this business?

You won’t be able to eliminate the financial risk completely, so focus on showing how solid your people are, how exceptional your product or service is (and why), and how huge the markets are that you’re going after (plus how you’ll capture them). You must define your current and potential competitors, too, in honest, realistic terms. Remember: Your pitch needs to reduce the financier’s fear of risk and increase their greed for gain. That’s what it’s all about.

2. Be Compelling
A compelling opportunity is the one that has the right deal, with the right price, at the right time, with the right product/service, and the right team. Compelling deals always get financed with favorable terms. To uncover your “compelling quotient,” answer the following questions:

* What, exactly, is compelling about your business (your products/services, team, unique approach, intellectual property, etc.)?

* Does your product or service clearly define and address a painful problem (or, in some cases, a key social trend)?

* Has your team had prior startup success so investors know they’re betting on a proven pony?

* Do you have high-profile advisory board members?

* Have you already attracted customers, either paying ones or those who’ve signed on for a free trial?

* Are your financial projections aggressive but realistic?

* Are your target markets tangible and accessible?

* Could your product or service lead to an expanded line of additional offerings?

* Have you built solid strategic partnerships?

* Do you have diverse and low-cost sales channels?

* Does your product or service have the kind of sex appeal that will make everyone in your target market want it?

3. Be Complete
You must have a trusted third-party review your pitch to ensure it addresses the high-level issues a financier might have. “Friendly fire” feedback is essential before you pitch to the potentially less friendly financiers. Ask anyone who can help—your startup-savvy attorney, advisory board, mentors, friends who have expertise in the specific market you are addressing or in business overall—to punch holes in your pitch.

Give them a list of questions to answer, such as: What business do you think we’re in? Is it interesting to you—why or why not? Were you to consider investing in it, what additional information would you need?

This is a time to lay bare any wobbly aspects of your pitch, when you’ve got time to fix them. If you charge ahead with an incomplete pitch, such as one that lacks financials, or a marketing or sales strategy, you’ll look either unprofessional, fly-by-night, or both. Be complete—it will help you gain the trust of all you pitch to.

Your speaking voice is one of the biggest assets you have when developing an online business.  It’s true.  There are a number of different applications where you can use your voice to enhance your online presence and your business model.  In particular, you can use your voice to record podcasts, add audio messages to your website and create audio information products.

Modern technology has made the recording of your voice very easy indeed.  You can download a free version of the Audacity software and purchase a microphone and quickly record digital audio files with whatever spoken message you like.  This article will discuss a few techniques you should use to make those spoken messages smoother and buttery, just like those radio announcers.

The first thing you need to do is purchase a pop filter.  Pop filters eliminate the plosives in your speech like P’s, B’s and D’s.  All three of these tend to pop into the microphone, thereby popping into the ears of listeners as well.  Pops can be extremely distracting when listening to an audio recording and can even discourage your audience from listening to any more of it.  A simple $10 pop filter looks like a big foam rubber cover for your microphone and it can eliminate the distracting plosives quickly and easily.

Next, it’s time to start recording.  And after your recording is complete, there are three electronic effects you can use to make your voice sound all milky like the radio announcers.  The most effective one is called the compressor.  It compresses the dynamic range of your audio file so that the loud parts are softer while keeping the volume of the softer parts the same.  The net result is that you voice sounds smoother to the audience.

I usually lower the pitch slightly as well.  On Audacity, you have four ways to specify the change you want: musical note, semitone, frequency or percentage.  I only lower it by half a semitone which works out to a 2.87% drop in my voice pitch so it’s a small change but I think my voice sounds better afterwards.  You can play around with this to see what pitch suits your voice best.

The last effect I use is the bass boost.  Predictably, it amplifies the bass frequencies of the audio file.  Now, it does NOT lower the pitch of the file.  It only amplifies the bass frequencies while leaving the treble frequencies unchanged.  This effect rounds out the bottom and takes the tin out of the recording.  Sometimes, my voice can sound tinny and shallow.  The bass boost eliminates that and leaves my voice sounding like honey.

At the time of this writing, my audio files have been downloaded over 17,000 times in 27 countries.  I don’t use these effects to completely alter my voice.  If you listened to my recordings, it sounds just like me.  But the effects I’ve described above make it incredibly smooth and pleasing to the ear, allowing the listener to absorb the content rather than being distracted by a poor voice quality.

I have two pieces of advice.  First, find a way of incorporating voice recordings into your business.  It adds a personal dimension to your online presence and enhances trust.  Second, use the effects I’ve described above to improve the sound quality of your recordings.  Your audience will respect you more as a result.

The celebration of a wedding is the union of two individuals who have promised to pledge their love for all eternity. This is the long awaited moment for every girl who dreams of one day finding her prince charming that will sweep her off her feet. As the wedding day is indeed a very special day, it would be bride has exerted all efforts in the preparation for a grand celebration. Careful thought has been made as to the wedding theme, the reception, the motif, the gown, the wedding favors, and even the wedding make-up. This is her day to shine and look her best as she walks down the aisle.

Every bride wants to look her shining best not only for the wedding pictures and video but also for his groom and guests as well. A bride’s wedding make-up is a cross between make-ups for day and night wears. Usually for some, the wedding ceremony is held in the afternoon with the reception in the evening. So the bride’s make-up has to be suitable both for daytime as well as night time. The best way to go for any wedding make-up is to create a conservative yet natural looking make-up with warm colors to keep the bride’s face looking fresh and radiant the whole day.

The theme as well as the bridal gown needs to be taken into consideration also, to have make-up that is in accord or harmony with the design and style of the dress. When it comes to the shade of the blush, peach or beige would give a more natural look. Using an eye shadow color that is in contrast to the color of your eyes also looks nice to give emphasis and definition. Light earth tones on your eyes could help create a more natural look as well. In choosing a powder or foundation, always select a shade that is the same as your skin tone or complexion. It is bad taste to have the color of your face in a shade lighter than the color of your neck and shoulders.

Choose shades like peach or apricot on your cheeks to look slightly flushed or to give the illusion of natural rosiness to your cheek. Select a lipstick shade that is light like beige and not those like deep red or pink.

Feel more like a princess with make-up that will make your groom fall head over heels in love with you again.