Personal Sales Techniques and Tips

This post has been sitting in draft since April. It was initially inspired by a fellow inbound marketer who asked me to help them with a start-up company prospect who they thought needed buyer persona profiles and a sales and marketing strategy. There were a number of other agencies on the call as a collaborative effort and was spearheaded by someone other than my referring colleague.

In his book "Sales Shift" (that you should be reading), Frank Belzer calls the approach of a prospect like approaching a red light. You go slow and look before advancing.

And other Sales and marketing thoughts for the weekend.

Looking back over the past week's conversations, blog post reads and other things that have caught my eye, these questions seemed to stick with me on my Friday review. And sure, maybe I'm feeling Seth Godin-ized now that I know he will be keynoting at Inbound2013. And perhaps these are just my reflections and mean nothing to anyone but me. (Is that why Seth doesn't allow comments on his blog? hmmm)

How inbound marketing has turned sales upside down making it more difficult and more lucrative at the same time.

Why I read it

When asked how and why I started my business recently for an interview, I was a little nervous about telling the real story. Partly because it would be put into print, but mostly because was a painful tale once upon a time. But I told the truth anyway. Here it is.

If you were to try and make me pick the best conversation I had this week, whether it was through LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Quora, email, phone, on other blogs, on my own blog, or in person- I would have a hard time choosing. Clever as I may be sometimes, I have learned something from every single one.

A #blogchat #carnival topic

Last Sunday night I played one of my favorite games that I call 'Twitter roulette', where I use my mobile twitter app and spin through the people I follow and randomly stop to see what comes up. If it's interesting, I explore further. If not, I spin the wheel again. This is how I discovered an event called #blogchat that happens every Sunday night on Twitter at 8pm CST.

Is this a Question of Smarketing Ethics?

Rick sent me this story of self control and marksmanship with an itsy bitsy shooter by a woman against a fierce predator. How could such a little weapon be powerful enough to protect her? I'm sure he had his own interpretation of the lesson here, and you may have yours too (comment below to share it). Here's the story:

How Stephen King Might Create Buyer Persona Profiles

Buyer persona profiles seem to be in fashion these days with the push for content marketing to become relevant and compelling, not keyword stuffed and boring. Creating content, whether that is writing blogs, interacting on social media, filming videos, creating infographics- is all just storytelling in many forms. Stories need characters, and the function of a buyer persona is the character in your business' story.

A fellow Inbound Networker asked me some basic questions about Smarketing recently, and I promised her a blog post on the answers. After the 4th page, I thought it best to answer her questions in 2 parts. This post is part 2, for part 1, read the post on Caldwell Marketing Communications blog.