sam101.com|Sales, Advertising and Marketing

Increasing Your Sales: – In this economy almost salesperson can feel defeated. Don’t! Success doesn’t just happen you must plan for it!

Increasing Your Sales: “Get a plan – write down your goals.” Those are words from my mentor Jackie B. Cooper (The Automotive Sales Superstar!)

Increasing Your Sales: Not everyone is cut out for sales, if your not, hire an expert – your business depends on it!

Increasing Your Sales: If your doing your own sales define your process – know the steps needed during each phase. If a step isn’t working tweak it!

Increasing Your Sales: Information is important so manage your data.

Increasing Your Sales: You must know your market to grow it! Who? Where? How? When?

Increasing Your Sales: Know your benefits and features – How are you different from your competition? Does your market know the difference? Tell them!

Increasing Your Sales: Stay in front of your market.  Don’t let them forget you when it is time to buy.

Increasing Your Sales: Look at your web site, marketing materials, company brand, message etc – would you buy from you? If not, change it now!

Increasing Your Sales: You can tell your client but when your clients tell your clients – BAM! Ask for testimonials they are gold to your market.

Increasing Your Sales: Get out there and network, network, network. Did I say, “get out there and network” – GO!

Increasing Your Sales: Be proactive, make a sales call, network, offer to speak to a local civic group. How can you get out there? Do it!

Increasing Your Sales: Become an expert by publishing a blog, write articles, let others post your articles to create buzz. Release press releases. Work it baby.

Increasing Your Sales: Define your sales goals. Be realistic. Don’t defeat yourself. As your sales skills grow let your goals grow. Stay with it.

Increasing Your Sales: Reward yourself so you get to know the feeling of winning, you’ll need to recall that feeling when you’re having a dry spell.

Increasing Your Sales: Review your progress. Review your plans. What worked last month might not work this month. Change what’s not working.

Increasing Your Sales: Start on your plan right now so you can take control over your sales success!

Increasing Your Sales: Outsourced what you can. It’s hard to do everything in the office and focus on sales too.

Increasing Your Sales: Before you hire a full-time salesperson consider – straight commission, a draw against commission or a salary plus bonus.

Increasing Your Sales: Just getting started in business, don’t have the ability to hire an experienced professional – think intern.

Increasing Your Sales: Contact the local college students often work for free a few hours a week in exchange for the ability to list the experience on their resume.

Increasing Your Sales: Define your sales call objectives. Know what the objectives are for each phone call, meeting, or written communication.

The “Asking Productive Questions” series was designed by Diane Carter, sam101.com’s founder, to help you change your life by changing the questions you ask yourself. You’ll find more than 3000 questions to help you dig deeper, start conversations, improve your critical thinking, network easier, test you limits and much more.

Each volume is ONLY $4.95

For a limited time you can purchase volumes one through three for $9.95 and we’ll GIVE you volume four FREE – our GIFT to you for having the desire to make change happen in your life today!

Author Beth Densmore is a Personal Life Coach and understand the power questions can have on your life. “Do you have a self-development toolbox? Do you have a standard set of instruments or mechanisms that you use to delve into your inner self? Just asking yourself those questions makes you think, doesn’t it? That is because questioning is the most powerful tool in your self-development toolbox. When we start on the self-development path it is usually because we have asked ourselves a question: who am I, what is it I want, why am I in this position, when can I change, where will this happen and how can I make it happen? Questions can be about us or about others and are used as identifiers. Who do I want to be? Who is standing in the way? Who will support me in this? Who can provide information?

We bring clarity to our quest by asking What. What is standing in the way of resolving this issue? What can I do about this? What is my next step?” Answering the What questions moves us another step forward on the path to change.

If you have ever been in the presence of a three year old for any length of time, you know that their favorite word is Why. The Why question brings them new information and helps them to understand the workings of a world that is new to them. It can be the same for us in the self-development process. Why do I feel this way? Why do I react like that? Why does this seem hard? Why can’t I get motivated?

To take action we need to ask the When question. When will I start? When will this happen? The answers to When questions create timetables and guidelines to follow. When putting a roast into the oven we need to know when it will be cooked. Knowing when the roast will be done moves us to have the table set and the vegetables cooked at the appropriate time. When questions motivate.

Where do we want our self-development quest to take us? If we don’t know where we want to go we will surely have a hard time getting there. And, if we don’t know where we have been how will we know where we want to go. Where questions raise our awareness. Where do I want to be one year from now…five years from now?

Once we know who, what, why, when, and where we need to know how. How can I accomplish this? How should I start? How will I feel when I am there? How questions help us to create a plan for action.

Trial lawyers always say, “Never ask a question you don’t know the answer to.” It is exactly the opposite in the self-development process. Queries you don’t know the answer to are the ones that will bring you the most new information about who you are, where you are and who and where you want to be in the future. Questions can stimulate a deep thought process and can bring us to places of discovery and revelation we wouldn’t otherwise reach.

If you want to: make a change, find a solution, clarify your thinking, identify a goal or learn more about the real you, just delve into your toolbox and pull out the questioning tool. It works every time!”

Volume One $4.95

Volume Two $4.95

Volume Three $4.95

Group Purchase of three volumes only $9.95, includes volume four FREE!

Sam101, a renowned branding and digital publishing company based in Atlanta, GA, which launched in 2002, announced today the release of the MedicMinder Journal.

Metro Atlanta, Georgia (PRWEB) July 10, 2008 — The MedicMinder was created from the personal need to care for aging and ill parents. The stress of trying to keep their medical appointments straight, document their medical history, and constant struggle to remember what medications which one was taking and when, caused great anxiety.

The public is invited to review The MedicMinder Journal at the Companies web blog at http://www.themedicminder.com and encouraged to sign the guestbook with your comments.

About The MedicMinder
The MedicMinder is an outstanding organizational and record-keeping system for caregivers to quickly access and share medical and drug history, including contact numbers for family and doctors.

We’ve created a proactive approach that emphasizes quick and easy access to medical and drug history. Reducing stress.

Simply stated: The MedicMinder is Trusted by Caring Families

About Sam101.com
Diane Carter is the founder of Sam101.com, a renowned graphic design studio located in Metro Atlanta, Georgia. With more than twenty-seven years of experience, she has spent 19 years of her career as an entrepreneur in sales, advertising, marketing and branding.

Sam101.com makes it as easy to work with a designer. We make it our goal to explain the fundamentals during the process in terms that leave out the “techy talk” so client’s are comfortable with the course of action. No hassles. No red tape. No surprises. Promise.

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Probably the most difficult challenge facing any business is how to increase revenue over costs. While there a number of ways to do that, customer acquisition, maintenance and relationships are going to be essential means of accomplishing that task. Here are ten questions with brief joggers to begin the awesome task of discovering that potential.

Sales are the process by which a company decides what it will sell, to whom, when and how, and then does it.

Sales and marketing go hand-in-hand and both need a plan to achieve a positive result. Successful selling also requires that the product or service is of suitable quality for its target market, and that [you] the selling company takes good care of its customers.

Your plan should include:

Sales Cycle – the Sales Cycle term generally describes the time and/or process between first contact with the customer to when the sale is made.

Sales Forecasts – also called sales projections, these are the predictions that sales people and sales managers are required to make about future business levels.

Sales Funnel – describes the conversion of prospects into sales. Prospects are fed into the top of the funnel, and converted sales drop out at the bottom. The Sales Funnel is a very powerful sales planning and sales management tool.

Sales Report – a business report of sales results, activities, trends, etc., traditionally completed by a sales manager, but increasingly now the responsibility of sales people too.

Sales Pipeline – a linear equivalent of the Sales Funnel. Prospects are fed into the pipeline in order to drop out of the other end as sales.

Nowadays, more is demanded from the selling process. If you need a sales training program developed for your company or if you have questions or comments about selling, sam101 is here to help, contact us.

With our ever-growing morgue of unused custom logo designs, we’re happy to offer them at a deep discount for your project.

There are times when a custom created logo is essential and other times when a semi-custom design would do saving you money and time!

Sam101 realizes this and that’s why we’ve opened our morgue of unused custom logo designs to you.

Semi-custom logos from our morgue file are priced at $99!

Contact us and tell us about your project and needs. We’ll provide you with a PDF file filled with possible options. Once you chose a file and we receive payment via PayPal we’ll change the name and send you web ready files in both color and gray scale.

Turn around time generally ranges from 1-2 working days.

Logos are sent to you in file formats that come with our standard custom logos. This includes GIF, JPG and PNG. We are happy to provide additional file sizes, but such requests will affect the final delivery cost.

Unlike our custom logos, semi-custom logos are not licensed to a single client for use. Meaning they maybe sold up to five times before being retired.

Custom logo work in terms of ownership and provides the greatest value for clients. Once final payment is received, you own the custom logo and all rights to use it however and whenever you see fit.

If you need to have a unique logo designed and developed, sam101 is more than happy to design something special just for your project and needs!

Sam101 has offered custom designs for over six years for companies both large and small and we have more than 27-years of design experience supporting us.

Our testimonials are proof that we are dependable, professional, creative, dedicated, reliable, deadline orientated and more. Please review and read them for yourself. If you’d like a business referral contact me.

We invite and encourage you to visit our blog on subjects like branding, digital publishing, marketing and sales. One simply idea could change your business forever! Check out our archives. Peruse our testimonials. Look over our online portfolios.

Contact us and let us put our expertise in design to work for you today!

Diane Carter

Did you know that the average person spends only about 9 to 10 seconds reviewing sales-related materials and a brief 4 to 11 seconds when reviewing a print ad.

So…grab your customers attention fast!

Diane Carter

Don’t forget your call to action!

“Please call us with your future graphic design (insert your product / service) needs. You already know us for our quality and timely delivery!”

“Please call and tell us how we can serve you better.”

Diane Carter

Your message should always start with your purpose and your purpose must benefit and interest your customer.

Stay focused on what your purpose is, what you need to communicate and what result you want to achieve. Because as the NY Times says, “Anything else is not fit to print!”

Diane Carter

Recently, I had a bad customer service experience that made me think about policies and when we should be willing to bend or even break them.

Leaving names aside let me just say that I had a contract that I cancelled. It was on an automatic billing so it was a surprise when I saw it on my monthly statement. I immediately picked up the phone and called to inquire why I had been billed when I had cancelled the contract. I was told that I had to give a 30-day notice and I had only given her a 29-day so it was within her rights to bill me for a final month.

This is an independent business owner so bending or breaking the rules in the name of good customer service was totally up to this individual.

I was amazed to find that she was more interested in one more $30 fee that my contract yielded or should I say her policy gave her verses the referrals she would have gained from breaking her own policy. “If I do that for you, I’ll have do to it for everyone.” Saying those words is one of the fastest ways to lose customers.

Standing by your policy is not always the best policy. Finding ways to bend policies to build customer relationships and referrals is a far better approach to customer service.

Diane Carter, sam101