Sales Drying Up? What To Do When You Get Stuck in a Sales Sahara Desert
Every now and then when you least expect it, your sales will dry so fast your mouth puckers. I call it “The Sahara Desert Dry Spell”. When it happens, it will suck every ounce of energy out of you if you don’t know what to do!
When the Sales Well Goes Dry
The reason Sahara Desert Dry Spells are so tough to deal with is because they happen so unexpectedly. It starts when you lose business that you were counting on, usually due to changes outside your control. If you get caught unprepared, what follows is a Sahara Desert Dry Spell.
It happened to me when I lost FOUR of my largest television advertising accounts in one year. Nothing to do with me, but I was left scrambling to recover hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
Losing those HUGE clients was a really tough lesson, especially as 100% commission salesperson. It forced me to become REALLY CREATIVE and also to make sure it never happened to me again.
So What Is a Sahara Sales Desert?
You’re selling like crazy, working your little buns off and then WHAM the sales start disappearing and you start to panic. The key to avoiding the dry spell from hell is knowing what to do.
Plan Ahead! If you are too busy working in your business instead of ON your business, you will have one dry spell after another. You must plan ahead and determine the months of the year that your sales increase or decrease and then create a strategy on what to do!
Have Some Reserves! (Camels Do!) Most people in business are under-capitalized. You have to SAVE or have access to money to help you weather a DRY SPELL so you don’t react in a manner that is totally short-term thinking. A dry spell is not a good reason to cancel advertising, stop promoting yourself, or not invest any professional development. If you are at that point, then you aren’t making wise business decisions and you have more DRY SPELLS in your future. GUARANTEED.
Don’t Have All Your Water On One Camel! It happened to me and it could happen to you. Who is your biggest client? Now imagine that client goes out of business, retires, chooses another provider – where would YOU BE? Don’t keep all of your revenue in a handful of clients otherwise if something goes wrong – you will need a HANDFUL OF KLEENEX!
Make Sure You Are Headed For An Oasis and NOT a Mirage! Do you have realistic sales targets? Do you have an established sales and marketing plan for the next year or are you WINGING IT? How much do you want to earn this year? Write out in detail how you are going to achieve that goal.
Remember this piece of advice: “Dig the well before you are thirsty.” Otherwise you will be looking at a dry bank account because your sales have flat-lined or dropped. Get creative with your sales and become your own rainmaker!
Want more sassy sales advice? Sign up for her saucy and smart FREE e-zine and receive her FREE Bonus Report “The 5 Biggest Sales Mistakes Women Make” at www.salesdivas.com
Business 101: Stop Letting People Pick Your Brain! How to Put Boundaries Around Your Knowledge
The words “Pick your brain” roughly translated into entrepreneur means “Please tell me what you’ve invested time and energy (and most often money) in learning for free”.
Not only that, but the main culprits for brain-picking tend to be the people who never (EVER) invest any of their own time or money in acquiring that knowledge.
The end result is you end up sharing what other people pay you for with someone who doesn’t even appreciate it and will never become a future paying client. So you are down two points: one for not getting paid and another for having your valuable time wasted.
The solution? Put a clear sales barrier around your time and knowledge.
How to Put a Sales Barrier Around Your Time and Knowledge
#1: Clearly Define the Boundaries – Know exactly WHAT you charge for and what you give away to demonstrate your knowledge. For example, a typical consultant will charge for a one-on-one consultation, but give away general how-to tips via a blog.
That means no one-on-one time without a client relationship! Direct the brain-pickers to the resources section of your web site or an audio recording so they still benefit from a little help from you without it turning into a free session.
#2: Know Your Value – Get clear in your own mind exactly how you benefit your clients. Do you help them avoid costly mistakes? Do you give them a jump-start on their project? Do you shorten the learning curve to success?
Knowing your value helps you be firm with enforcing your boundaries. Asking a potential client to pay you a consulting fee when you will end up saving them thousands of dollars on the wrong direction is a more than fair exchange.
#3: Communicate the Boundaries – Don’t hesitate to communicate what you charge for upfront. Often boundaries get unknowingly pushed when the pusher doesn’t know the rules.
The simplest way to do that is answer brain-picking types of questions with an offer of an introductory consultation or coaching session. It’s up to you if you want to offer that for free or a special rate, but the point is to clearly communicate when people are stepping into paying territory.
#4: Avoid the Sneak Attacks – Beware of the brain-picking sneak attacks. The seemingly innocent questions that turn into a full-on interrogation. Again, chances are the brain-picker has unknowingly crossed the line. Often the sneak attacks start is with a simple request for an opinion or an answer to a “quick” question.
Typically the sneak attacker will ask to set up a call or a coffee via social media or email. Respond to quick questions with quick answers, but stay in the medium. How sneak attackers work is they start with something small, but in reality it turns into something a lot bigger.
#5: Be Firm and Fair – Remember the golden rule: be firm with them and fair with yourself. If you ask yourself if you feel cheated or used by responding to a request for your time and knowledge, be firm with your boundaries.
Instead of wasting your time with people who will never value what time or knowledge, focus on over-delivering to those who do: your paying clients!
Smart Start-Up Tips: Too Buzzy Equals Bland – Why Buzzwords Should be Banned from Marketing
What’s the buzz on buzzwords?
Too many trendy words and over-hyped catch phrases makes for meaningless ‘me too’ marketing. Words like “innovative”, “authentic” and “out-of-the-box” at one time or another became so overused that their meaning got lost.
There is nothing innovative about using ‘innovative’ to describe your business. Chances are if you need to reassure your audience of your ‘authenticity’ then you need to do a morality check. And if the most ‘out-of-the-box’ thing you can say about your company is to use that catch phrase of days gone by, best to stay in the box.
The best-case scenario you come across at as corporate copycats who are unable to come up with their own creative marketing. The worst is that your buzzy buzzwords make for bland and boring marketing that confuses rather than inspires your target audience.
Does Your Marketing Pass the Buzzword Test?
#1: Does It Say Something? A sure sign of buzzwords is marketing that says nothing or what it says can be said about almost any business. Take this gem: “Innovative Solutions for Business”. It could apply to printers or consulting or almost anything that solves any of the zillions of problems, big or small, that businesses encounter.
#2: Does It Sound Like Everyone Else? The reason “Out of the Box” anything became meaningless is everyone was using it. Literally no one was spending any time in the box, according to the marketing. Everyone was running around outside the dang box doing everything BUT being original.
#3: Is It Easily Understandable? The trouble with buzzwords is they tend to rely on the meaning behind the buzzword, making it complete gibberish those not-in-the-know (which tends to be the majority of people as buzzwords tend to be industry-specific or insular).
A Final Word on Buzzwords…
The best approach to creating compelling marketing is to start by simply explaining what you do, how you do it and why it matters to your target audience in plain old boring English. No fuss. No frills. And definitely no buzzwords. From there, add a bit of flourish and flare, but never sacrifice the core message.
Think of your core message as what you would share with your target audience if they were sitting across the table from you at a local coffee shop because chances are you would never say something as vague and meaningless as “We offer innovative solutions for business”.
Smart Start-Up Tips: Top 10 Business Building Tips of 2011
We spent a lot of time thinking about ways that companies could get a smart start in business and shared a lot of tips over the last year. So many, in fact, that we just couldn’t narrow it down to our top 10.
Our Top (a Smidge More than) 10 Business Building Tips of 2011
Tip #1: On Social Media Basics, Andrea Vahl recommended, “Social Media is not something you jump into quickly and start signing up for everything. Listen first, create a strategy, decide what you want out of it and start small. Do one or two things well and then add more.”
Tip #2: Top tip on Staying Top of Mind with Prospects until they buy: “Find unique and interesting ways to let them know that you are still there and keen on helping them! Chances are you are on their to-do list, but as the to-do list grows, the ones on the bottom fall off their radar.”
Tip #3: What entrepreneurs forget to do (from the Checklist of Stupidly Obvious Things): “Give clear instructions on how to buy – Does your sales page pass the Grandma test? Meaning if you sent your 87-year-old (non-technical) Grannie to complete a transaction, would she succeed or get confused and give up? So often entrepreneurs forget to give simple, direct instructions on how to buy what they’re trying to sell. Do they click a big yellow button? Find a local dealer? Call a toll free number to place an order?”
Tip #4: On the Outsourcing Catch 22, Alycia Edgar reminds us to “Be realistic. Track your time to ensure your own productivity is up to scratch before you start outsourcing. Because if you are outsourcing on the premise of freeing up more time to work on revenue generating tasks and you are not productive yourself, don’t expect some miracle to occur just because you have more time.”
Tip #5: If you need a Random List to Inspire Innovation, remember to “Ask Questions (a LOT of Questions) – What you know what they say about assumptions? They make an ASS out of U and ME! Don’t assume anything. Ask questions about everything and anything to do with your business BEFORE a false assumption bites you in the ass!”
Tip #6: Thinking about expanding your reach? Engage People Who Are Already Where You Want to Be: “‘Gatekeepers’ are the people and companies who are already actively engaged with the people you want to reach. For example, the gatekeepers for my copywriting business are web design companies. By connecting with gatekeepers, you are opening the door to many opportunities. You only need to develop and maintain a relationship with that one gatekeeper instead of engaging with many individual clients.”
Tip #7: What is one Essential Entrepreneurial Skill They Don’t Teach in Business School? “Mindreading – Call it what you will, but essentially all marketing is a form of mindreading. Business school only covers the technical aspects of it, but what you really need to understand is how your customers think and what buttons will get a response. From there, all that fancy-shmancy tracking and testing works wonders.”
Tip #8: Nika Stewart reminds us in Sales Start with Simply Staying in Touch that newsletters must always “Be relevant! The main part of your newsletter – your article or tip – needs to be useful information for the reader. You should certainly put in some promotion about your company, but keep this to about 20 to 25 percent of the entire newsletter. Any more than that will turn off readers and cause deletes and ‘unsubscribes’.”
Tip #9: If you want to Write Headlines that Create Curiosity and Get Clicks, remember to: “Create Curiosity – Imagine you are whispering your headline to a co-conspirator. What would you say to perk their interest? “Psst…you will never guess what I just found out!” Write a headline that tells your target audience how you are giving them the keys to the kingdom or letting them in on a must-know secret or behind the scenes strategy. People love to know what they don’t know or don’t normally have access to.”
Tip #10: The golden rule of business and Something We Wish We Knew Before Starting in Business: “People who want to “Pick your brain” will never buy – Don’t waste your time with people who want to pick your brain because it is always for free and never leads to you getting paid for your time or your expertise.”
Tip #11: Top tip on Addressing Objections: “Don’t Assume It’s about Money – Don’t always assume your potential customers are too cheap to buy your product at full price. Rarely is price the main buying objection. Dig deeper and uncover the REAL reasons they are hesitating.”
Smart Start-Up Tips: Addressing Objections – Successful Marketing Speaks to the Elephant in the Room
Is there an elephant in the sales room with you? A big hairy one that your customers cannot resist looking at? A gigantic elephant of an objection that you are failing to address in your marketing?
That elephant is the reason your potential customers are not buying your product or service. It’s the sum of all their worries and concerns about buying from your company. It’s the reason they hum and haw instead of making a firm decision.
Every sales process reaches that dreaded point where you need to address all the objections your potential customers have to buying your product or service. It’s where sales are won or lost depending on the skill of the sales professional.
What if your marketing did all that heavy lifting for you? What if it answered those looming questions before they were even asked? What if your customers came into the sales process feeling confident about buying?
That’s what your marketing should do.
How Successful Marketing Speaks to the Elephant in the Room
I love how the Ancestry.com commercials handle potential objections: upfront. It speaks directly to all the people who may be curious about their ancestral heritage, but find the idea of starting the research process intimidating.
The ad says, “You don’t have to know what you are looking for. You just have to start looking” and then goes on to explain how EASY it is to use and how you don’t have to know exactly what you are looking for to find it because the site makes suggestions on where to look next.
Smart site. And smart marketing because it leaves the viewer with no questions about their ability to make the product work for them because the product literally does all the work!
How to Address Your Elephant Objections Upfront
#1: Get Inside their Heads – Understanding buying and objections means you need to play psychologist and get inside your potential customers’ heads. What worries them about buying? Why do they think it won’t work for them?
#2: Don’t Assume It’s about Money – Don’t always assume your potential customers are too cheap to buy your product at full price. Rarely is price the main buying objection. Dig deeper and uncover the REAL reasons they are hesitating.
#3: Mirror Your Sales Process – Design your marketing materials to mirror your sales process. Sit in on a few customer calls or pitch it to a room of prospects and ask them to share their actual concerns. Your marketing should step them through that entire process in the same logical manner.
#4: Focus on the Positive – Don’t raise new concerns by focusing on the negative. Instead bring up the objection in a positive light by pairing it with the solution. Talk about worries that it’s going to be hard by emphasizing how easy it is for anyone to use.
#5: Use Customer Testimonials – Ask your best customers to do the talking for you. The reason testimonials are so effective is because they speak to your potential customers in the same language. Use case studies to show how easy it was for an ordinary customer to use.
Smart Start-Up Tips: The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Sale – 5 Ways to Stay Top of Mind
It’s a common sales conundrum – how do you stay top of mind with a prospect and thus land the sale without resorting to bugging them for an answer? The answer is definitely NOT sending them email after email with a wimpy “Just following up” request for a response.
Instead be the squeaky wheel that gets their attention for good reasons! Find unique and interesting ways to let them know that you are still there and keen on helping them! Chances are you are on their to-do list, but as the to-do list grows, the ones on the bottom fall off their radar.
5 Ways to Stay Top of Mind with Prospects
#1: Share Interesting Links and News Articles – Send them an email with a link to a blog post or news story that relates to their business. It shows you are still thinking about their project and ready to offer up your ideas for their benefit.
Pro Tip: Keep a list of blog posts and news stories on hand for your industry to send out to prospects as part of your follow-up. Be sure to include a personal note and explain why you think the article would be of interest to them.
#2: Reach Out in Social Media – Tweet them (or even better, retweet something they tweeted), comment on a post, or reshare and tag them on Facebook or Google+. Show that you are actively engaging with their brand.
Pro Tip: Develop your social media network to use for the benefit of clients. Even if they don’t specifically hire you to help promote their brand online, it’s certainly a nice added bonus!
#3: Send a Handwritten Note in a Card – Write a thoughtful handwritten Thank You card sharing your passion for their project and thanking them for taking the time to consider you.
Pro Tip: Write a Thank You note immediately after connecting with your prospect so they will receive it shortly after (and most likely when they are making that all-important decision on whether or not to work with you).
#4: Comment on their Blog – Respond to the latest post on their blog with a thoughtful comment. More often than not, comments are being monitored and yours will not go unnoticed.
Pro Tip: Don’t forget to share your comments back to social media to show other prospects in that industry that you are actively engaged in reading and commenting on industry blogs.
#5: Invite Your Prospects to Your Event – If you are speaking, giving a lunch and learn or sponsoring a local event, invite them to join you as your special guest. Treat prospects like they are already your VIP clients.
Pro Tip: Make it a habit to sponsor a table at local speaking events and business luncheons so you always have an event to invite your latest prospects to attend.
Smart Start-Up Tips: Want to Expand Your Reach? Engage People Who Are Already Where You Want to Be
Want more business? You need to reach more people.
Sounds simple enough. Where it gets complicated is HOW you reach those extra people. Reaching more people is easier said than done if you are marketing on a shoestring budget.
Often small businesses and start-ups lack the marketing budget to build a buzz by advertising. That’s where you need to leverage who you know and expand your reach via the people who already reach your target audience, both online or offline.
Engage with People Who Are Already Where You Want to Be
So you want to enter a new market – perhaps it’s a geographic region or a new vertical. The particulars don’t matter. What matters is wherever you want to go or whoever you want to connect with, there is already someone there who is connected with those people.
Instead of entering a new market or territory uninvited (so to speak), expand via established people who already have relationships within that market. Ask for strategic introductions, offer to write guest posts or suggest a reciprocal partnership.
#1: Find Gatekeepers – ‘Gatekeepers’ are the people and companies who are already actively engaged with the people you want to reach. For example, the gatekeepers for my copywriting business are web design companies.
By connecting with gatekeepers, you are opening the door to many opportunities. You only need to develop and maintain a relationship with that one gatekeeper instead of engaging with many individual clients.
#2: Influence the Influencers – ‘Influencers’ are similar to gatekeepers in that they hold sway over a particular audience. Unlike gatekeepers, however, influencers don’t have a client relationship with that audience.
Because influencers don’t directly benefit from including you in their service roster, the key is coming up with a mutually beneficial relationship. In some cases, that may be reciprocal referrals. In others, it may be direct compensation.
#3: Connect with Connectors – ‘Connectors’ are the people who know everyone and pride themselves on being the go-to people for recommendations. From plumbers to programmers, their Rolodex is both broad and deep.
Their greatest asset is their reputation and relationships with their network so treat warm introductions from them with the highest level of care and attention. Think of it as a barter system for goodwill where favors and referrals are exchanged in lieu of money.
When expanding your reach by leveraging gatekeepers, influencers and connectors, it’s critical to answer one simple question: What’s in it for me? That answer holds the key to locking new connections and building relationships that will help you build your business for years to come.
How do you find the gatekeepers, influencers and connectors who have access to your target audience? Share your tips in the comments below!
Smart Start-Up Tips: Systems for Solopreneurs – 7 Ways to Use Systems to Multiply Your Time
The decision to go out on your own is a tough one, especially if you are transitioning from a corporate environment where you have support staff to do all those tasks that you hate doing to working as a solopreneur where you wear all the hats, including the janitor hat.
It’s ideal if you can hire support staff to do the same thing for you in your solopreneur business, but sometimes that’s not always feasible. That means you are stuck doing it all which can lead to a severe time crunch because let’s face it – there’s a reason those tasks were handled by multiple people in your corporate life.
Even if you are in a position to hire help, build your solopreneur systems first so you don’t end up overspending on outsourcing! That way when you are ready to outsource, you can delegate very specific, defined tasks that don’t overlap with any of your solopreneur systems!
7 Ways to Use Systems to Multiply Your Time
#1: Client Attraction – Call it whatever you like – client attraction, lead generation, prospecting. It should be your #1 task and needs a system (or perhaps a few) to make sure you are staying on top of those activities.
Your client attraction system includes both your online and offline marketing activities, such as blogging, networking and speaking. The intent of this system is to keep a steady stream of prospects moving into your sales funnel while the system behind it captures those leads and starts the sales process.
#2: Sales Conversion – The next key system you need is a method to move prospects from initial contact to signing the contract. How this system functions depends on your business, but the principle is the same.
Examples include email autoresponders, introductory coaching calls, or free consultation meetings. The purpose is to lead prospect through a series of value-added steps to a final upsell (or a series of upsells). Even something as simple as a preplanned email sequence that you store in your draft folder counts as a system.
#3: New Client Intake – Instead of going over the same information in the initial client meeting, create a standard package that answers a lot of questions upfront. The purpose is to save time and serve them better by using their time more efficiently.
Your new client intake system should include a standard “Getting Started” package that gives them any background they need before working with you, a new client questionnaire and a special unexpected bonus (to start the relationship off on a happy note).
#4: Project Management – Next you need to create a system for tracking progress and managing key deadlines. The best system works with whatever you currently use for managing your daily calendar and task list.
Even if you aren’t tackling big projects, it’s a good idea to get in the habit of formalizing how you approach projects so you don’t miss key steps and it’s easily shared if and when you bring on other team members.
#5: Social Media Communications – Chances are you are going to use social media in some form or another to build your business. It’s technically part of your client attraction system, but because it can be such a huge drain on your time, it gets its own category.
Two key ways to systematize social media are by creating a list of tips and inspirational thoughts that you share via your streams and setting up RSS feeds to share your latest posts automatically. This is not to say that you shouldn’t be actively engaging.
#6: Task Management – Tasks are perhaps one of the biggest challenges for solopreneur. The temptation is to try to tackle a laundry list of to-do’s which ends up pushing you into overwhelm where nothing gets done.
The specific system doesn’t matter as much as how you handle tasks. Whether you use an electronic system (recommended) or good old-fashioned sticky notes, only assign 2 to 3 must-do tasks per day!
#7: Administrative Functions – Boring stuff like bookkeeping, banking and filing tends to get neglected resulting in big piles of paper all over your office (and often missed or duplicate payments because you forgot which bills were paid and when).
Your administrative system doesn’t have to be overly complicated. An expandable filing folder for receipts, sorted by date and labeled, inboxes for accounts receivables and payables and a designated day to work through the tasks if you aren’t yet outsourcing.
Smart Start-Up Tips: Packaging Your Expertise – How to Create an Expert Blog to Attract Clients
What if you could take all your tips and tricks and turn it into a client attraction system? One that works for you day and night, acting as your self-serve sales pitch without seeming like one?
You can (and it’s a lot easier than you think because you know a lot more valuable information than you think)!
How to Create an Expert Blog to Attract Clients
Your value is in all the subtle details you know about your niche – the little gems and insider tips and tricks that you share with clients and prospects to demonstrate your expertise.
Remember, what is simple and obvious to you is pure gold to someone outside your industry. That’s the best place to start when creating an expert blog to attract clients.
Think of it as the teaser that gets them curious about what else you know. The key is giving enough information so it’s worth their time to read it, but not so much that they don’t ever have to buy what you’re selling.
#1: Tips – The simplest form is writing expert tips that share a sampling of what you offer your clients without giving away the step-by-step how-to that your clients get by working with you directly.
#2: Share Related Information – Instead of directly sharing your expertise, write about topics related to your area of expertise. For example, fitness coach may share recipes instead of ‘giving away’ the secret sauce to her coaching practice, which are her workout routines and meal plans.
#3: Build the Case – Share industry factoids and the background details that establish the premise for buying your product or service. For example, a health food company could share statistics about heart disease and healthy eating.
#4: Invite Guests – Invite guest experts to augment what you are delivering to your audience by inviting them to write a post. For example, a web design company may invite an SEO expert to write about search engine optimization.
#5: List Resources – Share your favorite recommendations. That can include books, software tools, web sites, or anything you use in your business or recommend to your clients.
Don’t forget – your blog posts can easily be repurposed into articles for your newsletter and vice versa. That way you are giving your audience the opportunity to choose how and where they connect with you online.
Smart Start-Up Tips: What Most Entrepreneurs Forget to Do – A Checklist of Stupidly Obvious Things
It’s rarely the big picture stuff that we totally forget. It’s all the little (seemingly insignificant) stuff that completely slips our minds until it’s too late. But as they say, it’s in the details (and that little stuff adds up)!
It happens to all of us – 10,000 business cards get printed without your social media links, you send LinkedIn requests to your new contacts without updating your profile, or you launch your latest product without letting your email subscribers know where to go to buy it.
It’s happened to us (or very close entrepreneurial friends who shared over drinks and laughter) and it could happen to you. Before your next entrepreneurial “Oops!”, read our checklist of stupidly obvious things (just in case you missed one of those small details).
A Checklist of Stupidly Obvious Things that Most Entrepreneurs Forget
#1: Share your social media links EVERYWHERE – On your business card, web site, email signature, author bio, and other social media sites. Include them everywhere because you never know who would prefer to follow, fan or friend you before taking the next step.
A recent entrepreneurial oops had me neglect to include my Twitter ID on a collaborative book I was asked to contribute a chapter to. Too bad because the book has been published and is now a bestseller.
#2: Include contact details on your web site – The more you want people to contact you, the easier you need to make it for them to access reliable contact information, preferably multiple methods to suit different communication preferences.
For example, if your business relies on potential customers picking up the telephone, it’s critical that you place contact details on the top of every page or use clear navigation to direct them to your contact page.
#3: Update your profiles and bio regularly – Did you win an award or other recognition? Change the name of your company? Publish a book? Don’t forget to update your bio!
Get in the habit of redoing or refreshing your bio on a regular basis, including your headshot. You don’t want to get caught with an outdated photo and a bio that’s missing your latest accolades.
#4: Give clear instructions on how to buy – Does your sales page pass the Grandma test? Meaning if you sent your 87-year-old (non-technical) Grannie to complete a transaction, would she succeed or get confused and give up?
So often entrepreneurs forget to give simple, direct instructions on how to buy what they’re trying to sell. Do they click a big yellow button? Find a local dealer? Call a toll free number to place an order?
#5: Always introduce yourself with your web site – Get in the habit of introducing yourself in interviews and media profiles as you plus your web site, complete with the dot whatever.
If it’s an audio interview and there’s a chance your listeners may not remember or misspell your URL, repeat it multiple times or spell it out. “I’m Carla Young, Publisher of MOMeo Magazine.com. That’s MOM-E-O (as in Mom CEO).”
#6: Include promotions in your email signature – Think about how much email correspondence you send out in a day. That’s how many opportunities you are missing out on to share what you are up to with people who already know, like and trust you.
Are you launching a new affiliate program? Promoting your new Facebook fan page? Offering a new and exciting product? Share it in your signature! You never know who will take you up on your offer if you never make it.
#7: Always NEVER forget to bring business cards – Business cards are small and fit anywhere so there’s no excuse not to have a couple stashed in every nook and cranny. Bring them…because you just never know!
