Thursday, March 28, 2013

Towels are Great Promo Products




One of the largest imprint areas of any promotional product.

 



No sizing requirements means hassle-free ordering.

 




Your logo will last for many years on a towel





When was the last time you threw away a beach towel? They last for 10-15 years!




There are few promotional products truly as useful as a towel.


Contact me to order your imprinted towel!

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Getting Customers from Bigger Fish

Guess what? We are a hungry little company, and we are agile and very focused on our customers! What do we offer? Lower minimums, great customer service, samples for trying on and color proofing, and great phone, too!

Sunday, March 24, 2013

How To Avoid The Price Cutting Trap

My my as God is my witness I swear that is the #1 problem I hear! The problem of so many distributors, that they are up  against competitors who are all too willing to cut prices.

Thank goodness for an article by Andy Cohen, who put the price war in perspective, by looking at Harley Davidson. How does H-D charge such high prices for their motorcycles and their apparel? That company has really connected with its customers! The customers are truly in love with the brand! Not just H-D, but think of the other companies who charge a fortune because their logo is on the item somewhere. Remember all the people who will buy something branded, and pay a lot more, because of it.

The only way to get consumers to pay more is to foster a close personal relationship. The purchaser of your item has to feel that the connection is more than just a buyer - vendor, that there really is something in it for them. Otherwise they will just fall back on who has the lowest price. You need a message that makes consumers forget about price, and focus on the service and the relationship that they have with you.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Forget the Sales Pitch & Use Story Telling

Once upon a time there was a great story in your fav magazine, with big full color pictures to boot advertising a great shirt. The next page featured a nice picture of the shirt, and a bullet point paragraph featuring all the benefits of this shirt.
Which advertising would stick in your head? Great story or facts & figures?
So, forget your sales pitch. Let your passion for your product come through, whether you are selling a tie dye t-shirt or a gutter protection system.
Then if your client wants the facts and figures, you can pull out your handy dandy spec sheet.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Why There is Lousy Customer Service by Gitomer


So let’s get back to the question at hand. Why does lousy service exist?
Who is responsible to make great service possible?
Who is responsible to make great service happen?
I always ask people in service positions, “How’s it going?” Most people respond in some negative fashion. Statements like, “Well, tomorrow is Friday!” or “I’ll let you know in two hours when I get off.” or “You’re kidding, right?”
These are losing, self-defeating statements. Statements made by people who fail to understand that doing their best, having a great attitude, and having a high sense of personal pride have nothing to do with the job. They have everything to do with who you are as a person.
Most of the front-line servers are in low-paying positions. When you combine that with our “feeling of entitlement” workforce and with training that’s all about the company, with a smattering of, “smile, greet the customer, thank the customer,” you have a perfect setting for mediocre or lousy service to occur most of the time.
About now, you want answers to this dilemma. I have them. They revolve around four words you already know: positive attitude and personal pride. But there is way more to these four words than your known definition.
Positive attitude and personal pride hold the key to your success, and they will be discussed in-depth next week.
Thanks to Jeffrey Gitomer, and who I totally agree with about personal pride and positive attitude. 

Friday, March 1, 2013

3 Tips for Presentations by Jamie Dunn

PowerPoint is dead
Stop using PowerPoint, seriously. I’ve never used slides in my life. Maybe it is just me but I instantly switch off when people are presenting with the same old PowerPoint templates that I’ve seen a thousand times before. Personally, I am a big fan of using a flipchart and coloured pens. It allows me to be creative, think on the spot and most importantly of all, react to what the audience is doing.
There is nothing worse than having a presentation all prepared but then seeing the audience switching off and using their phones whilst you’re presenting. You need their engagement and so doing things differently will get it. If you are a fan of having technology in your pitch, then use “Prezi” instead.
Know your audience
It is important that you spend some time finding out who is in your audience, what their main interests are, why they are coming to listen to you and most importantly, what value you can add to them. People are coming to listen to you for a reason so when they leave, you want to have given them 100 reasons to want to come and listen to you again, or send you an email, or follow you on Twitter or even pay you to work with them.
It’s important that you provide your audience with value, but always leave them wanting more. Your presentation/speech is the perfect opportunity to market what you do and develop your business so make sure you are demonstrating your value to your audience every step of the way. For me, if I am speaking for one hour, I will spend 15 minutes discussing my background and then the other 45 minutes on sharing advice, knowledge and adding value to my audience.
Call to action
So, you’ve delivered a presentation to a room full of great people and they are really impressed and love what you do. What now? What happens next? Whilst you have your audience hooked and listening to what you have to say, that is the perfect time for you to make sure something develops afterwards. There is no point in speaking to a room full of 50 people, but you don’t give them information on how they can contact you next.
Make sure your twitter, website and email address is given in your presentation. Make sure you wait around afterwards for people to talk to you, always leave five minutes in your presentation time for questions and answers and most of all, enjoy it. When you’re enjoying it, your audience will pick up on this and naturally enjoy it more to. There is nothing worse than a nervous speaker as it makes the audience question how confident you are in the content that you are delivering. Confident presentation = confident business.
by Jamie Dunn Entrpreneur