Internet Marketing | Lead Generation

Al Pacino and Developing a Positive Mental Attitude

Dean Hunt made a great / fun post at StreetLessons.com - Steve Jobs vs Al Pacino - The Battle of Inspiration which alerted me to the following video.

Can’t really explain why - but something about reminds me of Monday Morning sales meetings in my early days as a young / rookie Double Glazing salesman. I was fortunate enough to have a sales manager (Keith Revel) who seemed to have this remarkable ability to get us to reach deep down inside ourselves and find some latent talent that we never knew we had - which allowed us to better and better our sales results every week.

Thank You Keith - Thank you Al Pacino

I just love this amazing quote from Al Pacino / Tony D’Amato:

You find out life’s this game of inches, so is football. Because in either game - life or football - the margin for error is so small. I mean, one half a step too late or too early and you don’t quite make it. One half second too slow, too fast and you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team we fight for that inch. On this team we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when add up all those inches, that’s gonna make the fucking difference between winning and losing! Between living and dying!

From the 1999 Movie - Any Given Sunday

Getting More Cash Out Of Internet Sales Leads | Essential Tips For Home Improvement Sales People

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Confessions Of A Saleman

I Am a Salesman

Back in the early 80’s I produced an Audio Programme called: Super Selling. Today, for the first time in years I was reviewing the transcript from this audio programme and way at the back of the file, along with some other ‘positive sales quotes’ I found the following I am a Salesman MESSAGE. Obviously it appealed to me at the time

Perhaps a little dated today - but in an age when many sales people like to say they are in ‘marketing’ rather than ever admit they are sales people it is very much worth a read - if for no other reason than the fact that this is I suppose now a Historical Document.

It says: AUTHOR UNKNOWN - but if anyone out there knows who the Author is, please let me know.

I Am a Salesman

I am proud to be a salesman because more than any other man, I and millions of others like me, built a better world.

The man who builds a better mousetrap - or a better anything - would starve to death if he waited for people to beat a pathway to his door. Regardless of how good, or how needed, the product or service might be, it has to be sold.

“Eli Whitney was laughed at when he showed his cotton gin. Edison had
to install his electric light free of charge in an office building before anyone would even look at it. The first sewing machine was smashed to pieces by a Boston mob. , People scoffed at the idea of railroads. They thought that even travelling thirty miles an hour would stop the circulation of the blood! McCormick strived for fourteen years to get people to use his reaper. Westinghouse was considered a fool for stating that he could stop a train with wind. Morse had to plead before ten Congresses before they would even look at his telegraph.

The public didn’t go around demanding these things; they had to be sold!

They needed thousands of salesmen, trailblazers, pioneers, people who could persuade with the same effectiveness as the inventor could invent. Salesmen took these inventions, sold the public on what these products could do, taught customers how to use them, and then taught businessmen how to make a profit from them.”

As a salesman I’ve done more to the world what it is today than any other person you know. I was just as vital in your great-great grandfather’s day as I am in yours, and I’ll be just as vital in your great-great-grandson’s day. I have educated more people; created more jobs; taken more drudgery from the labourer’s work; given more profits to businessmen; and have given more people a fuller and richer life than anyone in history. I’ve dragged prices down, pushed quality up, ‘and made it possible for you to enjoy the comforts and luxuries of cars, radios, electric refrigerators, televisions, and double glazed homes and buildings. I’ve healed the sick, given security to the aged, and put thousands of young men and women through college. I’ve made it possible for inventors to invent, for factories to hum, and for ships to sail the seven seas.

How much money you find in your pay envelope next week, and whether in the future you will enjoy the luxuries of pre-fabricated homes, stratospheric flying airplanes, and a new world of jet propulsion and atomic power, depends on me. The loaf of bread that you bought today was on a baker’s shelf because I made sure that a farmer’s wheat got to a mill, that the mill made the wheat into flour, and that the flour was delivered to your baker.

Without me the wheels of industry would come to a grinding halt. And with that, jobs, marriages, politics, and freedom of thought would be a thing of the past. I AM A SALESMAN and I’m both proud and grateful that as such I serve my family, my fellow man, and my country.

AUTHOR UNKNOWN

Also see: Confessions Of A Salesman

How to get more leads from your home improvement website

Everyone wants leads - but you know it is an amazing thing - lots of companies build websites, even spend some money on Pay Per Click Advertising (such as Google Adwords) and perhaps even paid to be listed is some directories such as
Conservatory Buyers Guide
and then wonder why they don’t get leads, or don’t get as many leads as they would hope to.

Often they have spent significant sums on the website - and frankly a lot of these web designers can build you nice looking websites (with all the bells and all the whistles) - but many don’t build the web sites to CONVERT visitors to leads.

Sometimes home improvement companies even write of the Internet as “not working” - failing to realise that they actually control their websites destiny and the fact the site is not producing leads is that NINE TIMES OUT OF TEN - they don’t make it easy for their website visitor to give them a lead.

As an Internet Marketing Consultant I am often asked to review websites - and come up with some ideas for improving the conversion ratios (usually - leads to visitor ratio)

Perhaps I really should not give away a “trade secret” like this - but really this one point is so OBVIOUS that I am surprised web designers are still building websites with this “built in fault”

To increase your leads - MAKE IT EASY FOR PEOPLE TO CONTACT YOU.

Often a website will have a “contact us” button tucked away in some far corner that is not easy to find.

Please, PLEASE, put your contact details on each page - and also ideally - strategically within the website copy.

Better still - change “Contact Us” web form to a “Free Brochure” or “Free Info” or “Free Information Pack” and you will see a significant increase in sales leads (as much as 50 - 100% increase sometimes)

You should also have clearly - and in large TYPE have your phone number at the top of each page.

You should have both a form to fill in and your contact phone number showing.

Far too often salespeople and sales managers worry about the tyre kickers and the brochure hunters - and try to qualify their leads too much. The point of most contractor based, supply and install home improvement websites is not to SELL a product but to sell visitors on the company and encourage them to request more information.

I spoke to a sales manager the other day who complained how bad business was and the economy was all wrong blah, blah…..

A little later we are talking about web leads and he declares he only wants leads of his websites from people who want to have one of his sales people out for a quotation. (hense why his website only had a request a quote link)

Clearly he had not considered that some people may wish to make a “softer approach” first - to find out more about his company before asking a sales person to quote.

Sad for him, sad for his sales people and sad for his company

Please don’t make this mistake

Good Selling To All

Barry

Deciding to have a Weblog (BLOG) type website opens up all sorts of possibilities - some rather good (like an easy systematic EASY way to add new content - from anywhere) and some that for me are a little more challenging - such as being “open” and letting the “world” see a more intimate view of what motivates me, what inspires me, what makes me angry, what makes me sad, what makes me happy.

By nature - I am a rather shy person (not everyone knows that) - I can talk all day about business, about work, about the internet - but when it comes to discussing me I am more of a “closed book”.

Anyway - having decided to have a BLOG - it seems appropriate to at least give a little insight into what has made me the person that I am.

I have always felt you can tell a lot about a person by finding out who are their mentors, who inspires them and who they admire.

So I have decided to create a category called “MENTORS” - this will be a category to which I will occasionally add details of individuals who at various times in my life have inspired me, taught me and helped me with valuable life lessons.

There really will be no order of priority in how I relate these teachers / mentors - it will really just be a case of me “remembering” and “acknowledging”.

Today - I am starting with a gentleman called: Tom Hopkins

As some may perhaps know - Tom is one of the worlds foremost sales trainers - and way back in the early 1980’s he have a tremendous impact on my fledgling direct sales career.

His book, How to Master the Art of Selling - was at least at that time the book that changed my sales career - that moved me from an average sales person to an award winning sales person. I also had a whole load of his cassette tapes which I listened to so much in my car that I almost could repeat the content “word for word”. He taught me how to “flow” as a salesman - to be able to respond to each and every selling situation in the most appropriate way - rather than stammering and flustering as often had been the case before as a rookie salesman.

Thank you Tom
http://www.tomhopkins.com

Conservatories and Sunrooms Online