Radio Show Preview: Value Definition & ROI

Date: October 25, 2007

Episode Title: Defining Value & ROI

Guest: Michael Nick, Author of “ROI Selling” and “Why Johnny Can’t Sell”

Expressing value in your sales and marketing messages can be a huge challenge for many organizations. More often than not, our own needs and focus working IN the business vs. ON the business overwhelms us to spread messages that are self serving and not customer centric. My guest, Michael Nick, will talk about ways you can express true customer value in your messages in an objective manner to better serve your customers.

During the show, you will learn such things as:

• Establishing measurable goals
• Developing “why buy” calls to action
• The 5 rules for creating effective business issue statements
• Crafting realistic ROI metrics
• Discovering true customer needs and attaching a value to those needs

You don’t want to miss this show! Tune in Thursday at 2 PM ET (11 AM PT) for another power packed marketing hour on “The Bauer Pauer Hauer.”

Radio Show Preview: Accelerating the Sales Process

Increasing sales is a goal of just about every single company out there today but far too many don’t know how to grow their sales effectively.

My guest 10/18/07, Michael Boylan, author of “Accelerants” and “The Power to Get In,” will share ways you can grow your company as a sales representative, marketer and/or a business owner including how to:

• Target new revenue opportunities more efficiently and effectively
• Compress and make more efficient your existing sales process
• Craft stronger, more persuasive value propositions that create urgency to act
• Identify and gain access to the real decision makers faster and more effectively
• More accurately assess and scope the likelihood of each opportunity’s probability to close earlier in your courting process
• Compress closing cycles and reduce your cost of sales by up to 25 percent

To join us for the show live @ 2 PM ET (11 AM PT), please visit The Bauer Pauer Hauer. If you’d like to call in and ask a question, the number is 866-472-5790. To have a question answered (on or off air), please e-mail radio@smbconsultinginc.com, and I will see to it you get your question(s) answered.

Book Review: Conversation Marketing

Author: Ian Lurie

Approaching prospects and customers as if you’re just having a conversation tailored specifically for their situation is a great way to better connect with them and ultimately get them to buy. That’s the basic premise of the book, and I found it to be a good, albeit short, read.

Since the book IS so short, this is a quick read for anyone looking for ideas on a different approach to marketing their goods or services. It’s to the point and delivers some good food for thought.

Overall, I’d recommend Conversation Marketing although it won’t give you a brand spanking new approach to try. There are a lot of books that touch upon this concept (Seth Godin talks a lot about it in his books) so the odds of you having read other works that deliver the same basic message are pretty good if you’re into this sort of thing.

Radio Show Preview: Free Publicity Tips

This Thursday (October 11, 2007) @ 2 PM ET Marcia Yudkin, author of “6 Steps to Free Publicity” will join me on The Bauer Pauer Hauer.

Here are some things you’ll learn from the show:

• What publicity can do for your business.
• The dos and don’ts of dealing with reporters, producers, and other media folks.
• How to spread your message in an objective manner.
• How to increase traffic to your website.
• Establishing credibility and “expert” status with your target audience.

I hope you’ll carve out an hour to join me Thursday @ 2 PM ET (11 AM PT) for another power packed marketing hour. If you’d like to ask Marcia or me a question, please e-mail radio@smbconsultinginc.com, and we’ll get you an answer as soon as possible.

To access the show, visit VoiceAmerica Business or The Bauer Pauer Hauer.

Book Review: The Ultimate Sales Machine

Author: Chet Holmes

First off, this is a fantastic book for anyone involved in the marketing of a business; not just salespeople. Chet Holmes does a great job connecting the strategic aspects of business with the sales and marketing functions to the point it would be hard not to increase revenue if you take action with the 12 areas he covers in the book.

As an aside: I also sat in on one of the webinars given by one of his direct reports, and it was fantastic. The webinar covered many of the same concepts included in the book, but it sometimes helps to hear the material presented in various ways so that it sticks.

Education based marketing is the way to go in today’s business climate, and Holmes’ drives that point home very well throughout the book. Potential consumers and prospects are bombarded with messages every day, and they are very self centered when they make a purchase. In order to standout from the clutter, an education based marketing approach is necessary and highly advisable based on Holmes’ approach.

Overall, I’d highly recommend this book if you’re looking to improve your marketing’s reach and increase sales as a result. If you take action, you will get results.

Bauer Pauer Hauer Show #1 Recap: Hot Button Marketing

Guest: Barry Feig

Topic: Hot Button Marketing

Radio show number one is in the books, and I feel pretty good about how everything went. At first, I was very nervous but that quickly dissipated and the show took on much more of a telephone conversation that everyone got to listen in on. Thanks to Barry Feig for being my first guest and being very easy to talk to and informative (as he always tends to be).

On the show, Barry and I discussed his book “Hot Button Marketing” and how a marketer can tap into various combinations of the 16 hot buttons he outlines in his book. There are rational reasons people buy, and there are the real (emotional) reasons. We may rationalize something extremely well after we’ve bought it, but emotions drove us to make the purchasing decision.

The primary key to uncovering hot buttons is asking questions. That sounds very simplistic, but so many marketers miss the boat by talking about their product or service at length without learning anything helpful about the customer or prospect. Think about it—you have two ears and one mouth so you should use them in that proportion. Barry and I shared a chuckle about that.

People want status and belonging frequently when they purchase something, and Barry touched upon some ways to tap into those particular emotions when marketing a product or service.

We also talked about sex of all things on air. Sex is one of the “hottest” hot buttons, and just about any marketer can tap into that to improve their results. Whether you use the allure of possibility or blatantly utilize a very attractive person to peddle your wares, sex sells!

During the last segment we talked about Barry’s Hot Button Marketing training program. In fact, we may partner to teach this via seminars, boot-camps, and webinars as time progresses. To learn more about the program, you can visit http://barryfeig.com or e-mail Barry directly at feig@barryfeig.com.

Thanks again to Barry Feig for joining me on the air for my first show. If you’d like to listen to the podcast for the show, here’s a link: Bauer Pauer Hauer Show #1: Hot Button Marketing.

Please join me October 11, 2007 @ 2PM ET when Marcia Yudkin will talk about her book “6 Steps to Free Publicity” and learn how you can attract valuable publicity to improve your marketing reach.