It’s been said that money hides mistakes. Corporate earnings are down, the market drops and gains triple digits on multiple days, housing prices continue to fall and foreclosure rates are skyrocketing. It’s no question that we are in an un-stable economic environment. Are we in a recession right now, if not today will we slip into one next week, or perhaps next month? With economic uncertainty looming, many of our clients are asking: How should I position my firm in the months to come? We are fast approaching the end of the first quarter. Today, we cover a topic that just might contain the insight you need to uncover any hidden mistakes and help you surpass your 2008 goals.The “Balanced Scorecard” is a strategic management approach developed in the early 1990s by Dr Robert Kaplan of Harvard Business School, and Dr David Norton.Much like the “Balanced Scorecard” of the 1990s, that focused on linking business performance to department metrics, The CxO Group, LLC uses a “Sales and Marketing Metrics Scorecard” (http://www.sales-scorecard.com/) with a similar approach, but designed for today’s economy.Today’s scorecard creates interaction and links between five sales management pillars as a packaged team to help drive performance.– Sales– Marketing– Strategy– Operations/Development– Partners/AlliancesFirst, we create identifiable tactical measures for each of your sales team members and contributing departments. Then, we develop and help you implement the scorecard into a living, breathing business tool to proactively manage and link strategy, marketing and sales.This tool becomes a leading business driver that when used correctly, increases corporate cash flow, accelerates operational success, and allows companies to manage their business model by proactive metrics, not reactively by emotion.With this linkage, the scorecard provides clarity in strategic and tactical goals that can be readily monitored to understand where performance is coming from and where remedial attention is needed. As I mentioned, we are regularly asked about the best improvement initiatives to be made in this uncertain economy. We always suggest companies look towards sales metrics as the way to grow their business and uncover those “hidden” mistakes.Start with the foundation. If your sales and marketing organization doesn’t have clear objectives and metrics for accountability then you probably have a few mistakes hiding in your process that are costing you money. Clear sales objectives that are aligned with company strategy is one way you can be assured of hitting your goals in uncertain economic times.At The CxO Group, we believe the entire company, not just the sales department, is responsible for revenue capture! Visit us online at http://www.thecxogroup.com/ give us a call today at (972) 727-6880, or email info@thecxogroup.com to chat about how we can help you create a sales & marketing metrics scorecard that is custom fit so your firm’s business assets are centralized on revenue development and all departments are linked to the performance.

Does your website create website traffic and generate enough sales leads? If you are like most CEO’s, sales and marketing management I speak with on a daily basis, the answer is probably no.If you perform a Google search on “sales and marketing strategies” you’ll be pleased to find over 62 million web pages devoted to helping market a business and increase sales. Spend just five minutes looking at the search results and two items become very apparent . . .

1. You can’t expect to compete in business today without leveraging your reach with online digital marketing tools and having a Web Site Marketing Strategy.
2. If you’re not appealing directly to the person who is reading your ad, you risk them seeing it without realizing how it relates to them.

Considering there are over 65 million pages devoted to “sales and marketing strategies” validates the importance of creative writing and how to appeal directly to your customers’ need to increase traffic and conversions.Keep in mind that when people meet in a live in-person business meeting, we introduce ourselves with some statement about what we do, and why we should work with one another. In a live meeting it’s important to show very quickly that we understand their issues and needs, and that we have ideas and solutions to address these.Your website is a virtual meeting tool. It must accomplish the very same objectives of an in-person meeting. It must convey common points of interest, whether personal or professional. The virtual visitor must begin to feel that they can relate with you, and this helps to build the beginning of a business relationship. Studies show you have 8 seconds to build this relationship before they click to the next site listed in the search listings. If the visitor doesn’t feel they can relate to you, if they’re overwhelmed, confused, can’t easily navigate your site or simply not interested in your site, they’ll leave in very short order — 8 SECONDS!Keeping the above strategy at top of mind, here are the top seven smart ways to get your business noticed on the Internet.1. Keep it simple.Get rid of Flash and fancy intro pages! Studies today show you only have 8 seconds to convince a prospect how you can help. Does your website describe your product or service in a succinct, compelling and visual fashion in that timeframe?With thousands, perhaps millions of Google hits for a given search term, prospects are looking for exactly what they’ve typed in or they move on to the next search result.2. Value First, Brand SecondDon’t make the mistake of dragging your business value behind you by leading with the brand name of your product, service or company. Push your business value out in front of you and set yourself above the competition by using “Value Forward” methodology!3. Call to ActionOnce you’ve got their attention you must have calls to action like an offer of a free white paper, webinar, or newsletter to harvest prospect contact information.4. Easy NavigationYour website must be easy to navigate with less than 7 navigation buttons on the home page.5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)Make sure your site appears high on search engines’ results pages. By including the right keywords and phrases, your site will appear higher up on Google, Yahoo! and other search engines.The key to keywording is translating what your product or service does into appropriate “Value Forward” keywords and phrases that will turn your visitors into qualified sales leads.6. Pay Per Click (PPC)Your sponsored or PPC listing on a search engine results page (SERP) must call out to the person reading it. If you’re not appealing directly to the person who is reading your ad, you risk them seeing it without realizing how it relates to them.In many situations it may even be necessary to develop new landing pages to help increase site level conversion.7. Podcasting and YouTubePodcasting and YouTube are new and simple technologies that you may want to take a look at. All you need to get started is a decent microphone, a digital audio or video recorder and editing software.This is a great strategy for many small businesses for several reasons. A voice, or video reference or testimonial rather than words on a website can convey conviction, credibility and personality.8. Track Your Customer Conversation Ratio or C.C.R.It is not how many unique visitors come to your website that is important. It is how many you can identify as prospects. Most companies today spend large amounts of marketing dollars on tradeshows, advertising, email marketing, corporate branding and direct mail driving thousands of potential buyers to their website . . . yet they don’t know who is there and don’t have engagement devices to capture their name. To generate more leads, track your C.C.R. through your daily audit logs as well as the names of those who sign up for your free information.Are you interested in insuring your solutions, products and services are conveyed in a compelling fashion on your website? Yes, your web designer will provide the actual website design and artwork, BUT it’s up to you to know what the content should be. Most importantly, you need to supply content that will trigger search engine hits and drive qualified traffic to your website.When you’re not experienced or don’t have the budget to have web strategy, marketing, sales or systems people on staff, or simply don’t have the bandwidth, get help! Smart business owners surround themselves with consultants that are strong where they are weak. Please consider having us help with your sales, marketing, and website strategies improvement projects.

Will Your Sales Team Finish 2007 Strong? If not, perhaps it’s because the prospect’s perception of your business value, and the actual value delivered of your offering are mis-matched.

As Sales Training, Marketing Advisement and Strategy Specialists for growth-directed companies in Dallas, we have identified five steps of prospect value identification that take place during your sales cycle. Using these will help you close deals already on the table for 2007 and applying this to your 2008 forecast will help shorten those sales cycles.

Prospect value identification is an integrated process of perceived and actual value delivered based on your offering and your customer’s perception of that offering at various stages of your sales cycle. There are five steps of prospect value identification that take place during your sales cycle and they include:

1. The Vendor’s Perceived Value
   This is a vendor presented value and is based on how you see your value and how you communicate its status to your prospects or existing customers during the pre-sales cycle through your firm’s marketing communication and sales step process.
2. The Customer or Prospect Transitional Value
   This value happens in tandem during the discovery process where the prospect matches or rejects your perceived value (vendor’s perceived value) with their perception of your value. This is a value conversion step during the sales cycle.
3. The Prospect’s Perceived Value of Your Offering
   This value happens when your prospect or your customer finalizes their perception of your value relative to your competition and makes an assumption (correctly or incorrectly) of the value of your product or service relative to price, the business results it produces and the alternative options they have for purchase or non-purchase.
4. The Prospect’s Actual Value
   This is the alignment by the prospect or customer during their post-sale decision process to determine if the perceived value communicated by you in the pre-sale matches their perception of your actual value in the post-sale.
5. The Value Gap
   This is the measurement or gap between the vendor’s perceived value believed during the pre-sale steps and the prospect’s actual value calculated after the first sale.

Prospect value identification by its very nature is a layered, intricate process that must be aligned with your sales and marketing communication as an integrated approach. Prospect value observation starts at the beginning of your sales cycle and your position is often determined based on your entry point into the organization.

Enter into a prospect’s organizational chart below the title of Vice President at the beginning of your sales cycle and you are entering into the commodity zone of buying. Prospects below the title of VP generally make business decisions based on your offering’s features, functions or price.

When you sell management at the Vice President level and above, they buy based on their perceptions of your business offering’s value. This is a variable option that you can manipulate if you can sell correctly.

Often there is a gap between what firms believe in themselves and what their prospects actually experience.

It is not what you sell, but how your prospect positions the value of your offerings against the alternative buying options they have that must be managed.

To sell more, sell above the commodity line, manage the prospect’s perception of your business value, and control the value gap between their perception of your value and your perception.

Would you like to Evaluate Your Revenue Capture Success in more detail? Visit this link and request a copy of our Sales and Marketing Scorecard. It is a management business assessment tool designed to help you to evaluate your firm’s revenue capture success and compare your current operating model against industry best practices to help your company achieve its peak performance. The scorecard contains 100 questions on your sales and marketing methodology and supplies recommended best practices to increase your business success.

I just received an email from our neighbor coordinator alerting us that someone had received a call from AT&T (or Telus) and that they are testing their phone line and to press #90. This “supposedly” will give access to the person to make long distances call but charged to your phone.

So I looked into this and seem like this is just another chain letter that’s been going around since 1998. You can see it yourself on about.com and is known as an urban legen that’s partly true. Partly true because:

‘What the warning letter floating around the Net doesn’t say is that this scam only works on telephones where you have to dial 9 to get an outside line. Unless you have to dial 9 to get an outside line at home, this scam does not affect residential telephone users. Dialing “nine-zero-pound” on a residential phone will only give you a busy signal. That’s it.”

I would just read the bottom comment on that page and also read it from the following sites. Regardless of what it does or doesn’t do, I’m sure you would know not to do anything that’s asked of you from anyone who calls out of the blue.

From FCC
Breakthechain.org

For businesses in the greater Dallas area getting lost in the sea of obscurity underneath the ever-growing plethora of businesses is becoming as easy as racking up tolls. Setting yourself apart is an essential component of any business. In today’s technology age, you can become just as obscure (if not more) with your Internet presence as you can your physical presence. Here are a few tips to increase your visibility online, sales in all areas, and become a trend setter in your industry rather than a bench warmer riding the endless pine.

1. Put your business out there. Word of mouth is always a great way to promote your business. However, society is not as dependent upon this ancient information passing method as it used to be. People today look online to determine which restaurants to eat at, which stores to shop at, and which products they want to buy. If they cannot find you online, then odds are good they won’t find you offline either. Building an informative, targeted, and brand-developed website is no longer a step-up, it is a must have.

2. Don’t just build a website, build the right website. Too many businesses just think that any website should suffice as presenting themselves online. This is just not the case as your website is your one-stop shot for making an impression, and that impression does not last long. The average site is viewed for less than 10 seconds. If you don’t make a graphically appealing statement in that amount of time then you lose numerous potential customers before you even got a chance to present yourself. You know your business is better than others out there, so make sure you give your establishment a better shot by providing something that people or going to look at and more importantly, want to look at. Choose a quality web design company, located right here in Dallas, to help your business make the right impression.

3. Market your online presence. Just as you would send out fliers, mailers, print ads, and more for your brick and mortar location, you would also do the same for your online location as well. Simply building a website is not enough to get the masses to come flooding through your doors. You must market your website with just as much vigor as you would your regular business. The world of search marketing is constantly evolving and you should do yourself the favor of researching search engine marketing services to help promote your online brand.

One could not say enough how important it is to put a quality online establishment on the web for thousands of potential customers to view. Your website works for your business even while your are not. To the savvy entrepreneur, that is an investment worth making. A quality online presence can level the playing field for your small business, or even large businesses, against other competitors. Where do you stand?

Sally sells seashells on the internet. The seashell she sells are found on google I’m sure. Yeah sure, that’s not how it goes, but if tongue twisters, rhymes, or lullabies were created for the next generation then surely it would be different from the old ones. It would probably include things like LOL, BRB and “Whatever”. Where is this leading to? Nowhere really…hahaha.

Actually I just wanted to make a point that it is important for businesses to have a web presence. Some people may disagree, but I for one look for business or service providers that do have a web presence. Even a plain and simple web page with basic info, history, and a few photos would be enough. Just enough for me to know more about the business other than just the name, address, and phone number. Even when I look for restaurants to go to or get take out from (since cooking is a little non existent at this moment), I often look for their website and if they have their menu listed, that’s even better. I live the web and so do a lot of younger generation and if you want to target them, you need to have something on the web.

I understand that not every business owner knows how to get themselves on the web and it may not be in their budget. So to support local businesses that do not have a web page and would like to have one. They can use the contact form to request getting a free subdomain from bigindallas.com such as yourbiz.bigindallas.com. Not all business will be qualified and individuals can make a request as well.