Thursday, July 30, 2009

GoSmallBiz.com

At today's meeting, Chuck Holder called our attention to a nifty business aptitude test that's available on GoSmallBiz.com. This is website is apparently associated with PrepaidLegal.com. Chuck is a representative so you can contact him about getting access: cholder80@PrepaidLegal.com.

Lester Wills will present at our Aug 6 meeting on "Yes Strategies."

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Tips on Effective Selling

Today Mathew Assemes briefed us on a presentation he attended about effective sales tips. Here are some of the ideas he mentioned:

  1. Do your homework before your business call.
  2. Be a customer of the client.
  3. Work on your elevator speech.
  4. Do not bring a folder full of brochures, find out individual needs. (Brochures are presumptive. They imply you assume you know what they need. Better to seek to find out what they need.)
  5. Know who the decision maker is.
  6. Begin with the end in mind.
  7. Know who the decision mater is in the organization. Are they the ONLY decision maker or might others veto their decision?
  8. Respect their time.
  9. Followup is the most important part of the call.
  10. Building relationships is position marketing.
  11. Underselling and over delivery.
    Matt's presenter had advocated "don't undersell or overdeliver." We questioned this advice. Following it can easily wreck your credibility by making you appear purely self-interested. Prospective clients will want you to care about their needs.

Updated 7/27/2009 based on meeting notes.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

King Warrior Magician Lover

On July 9, 2009 at our EC meeting, I began a presentation that I hadn't really had time to winnow down to the time we had available to cover it.

It was about Robert Moore's and Douglas Gillette's 1990 book called "King Warrior Magician Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine."

I had mentioned this book in an earlier meeting and Peter expressed interest in hearing more about it. So we made it the subject of a meeting.

But since it's too much to cover in one meeting, Peter suggested I blog it. So I cleaned up and completed the copy I had started. I have created a website and put it up there. This link below takes you to it.

If everyone is interested and reads it, then we'll be able to discuss it in a future meeting if we so choose.

Of course, you can just buy the book yourself but this is only (?) :) 7 pages which is a darn sight less than the whole book! What I eliminated to create this was mostly cultural histories, anecdotes, excess examples and redundant material. Otherwise, the core of the information is there.

http://sites.google.com/site/karenhzipser/home/king-warrior-magician-lover-summary