Everyone is always looking for a simple marketing angle to get users, customers, or eyeballs.  And I thought I would share three fast ideas I have heard this week for doing just that:

1. Offer a Gift to Charity – A friend of mine promised to donate $1 to the favorite charity of every person who followed him on Twitter.  He capped the give away at $2K and he made it mandatory that the charity be a recognized non-profit.  He got 6,000 followers in a day.
2. Create a Deck of Cards – One of the WV portfolio companies, PBworks, decided to run a custom deck of cards contest for the thought leaders of Enterprise 2.0.  It brought a ton of social media attention to PBworks.
3. Give Away a Prize Pack – Get friends and associated companies to offer prizes as part of a prize pack that you can use for a contest.  Keeps your cost to near zero and also lets other companies share in driving attention to the contest.

About the Author: Elinor Stutz is CEO of Smooth Sale, LLC, International Author, Sales Trainer & Coach, and Motivational Speaker.

It was an unimaginable experience — a gigantic corporation that should know to train its employees much, much better.

A portion of my income is generated by delivering webinars.  Therefore, it is vitally important that my cable service be delivered without interruption. Unfortunately, my experience was such that I was motivated to change providers. I walked into the local store of the provider with all of the internet and television equipment in hand that required being returned. As fate would have it, the store was filled with new customers waiting in line.

I was cheerfully greeted — an excellent beginning but the excellence ended there. I was then asked to put the used equipment on the counter in the center of the store. Suddenly all eyes were upon me. Next I was handed a stationary phone connecting me to customer service - placed on the counter in the center of the store – and – in front of all the customers waiting to purchase!

This was an excellent strategy for discouraging their new prospects, current clients and future business development as I tried to discretely explain why we were terminating service. Why didn’t the employees escort me to a private room to take care of this? Emphasizing the company’s lack of forethought, this morning’s newspaper relayed that the very same company is not handling complaints of dropped calls on the iPhone appropriately. Apple is seriously considering Verizon as its next vendor. The marketing messages given by this company is “We’re too big and don’t care what you think!” Keeping this up, they won’t be too big for long.

In short, always take the leadership stance to be of the mindset of caring about your clientele and striving to build relationships. In turn, your clientele will take care of you making for a continued Smooth Sale!

About the Author: Elinor Stutz is CEO of Smooth Sale, LLC, International Author, Sales Trainer & Coach, and Motivational Speaker.

Every morning I make it a practice to read the business news. Today I read that Toyota reflected on their past polices, changed their mindset and is now considering reaching out to its clientele in 3 different ways:

1. Free maintenance may become standard for U.S. clients
2. 0% financing extended
3. Discounted lease offers

Given their very serious blunders in the past, these new incentives are definitely going to attract the attention of new car buyers. These should work to turn around a previously lost clientele for ultimately greater revenue.

As entrepreneurs, every once in a while we all make errors. So the question is: which customer service policies do you have in place to smoothly continue your relationship with your clientele should something go wrong? It’s important for business development and even to remain in business that you have a plan in place.

When you communicate how you resolve problems you are seen as a leader and the go-to person for when your service is needed. This is a large part of your marketing effort and it will work to spread great word of mouth about you and your business, and will attract many more sales.

Wishing you always a very Smooth Sale!

About the Author: Elinor Stutz is CEO of Smooth Sale, LLC, International Author, Sales Trainer & Coach, and Motivational Speaker.

Most often marketing experts will suggest beginning with a small defined audience to quickly become the expert and leader in your field leading to a quicker conversion of prospects to clients. But what if you have been in business a long time and were to focus on the tiniest portion of your business that you enjoy the most – will that work in attracting more sales?

Last year was a tough one for most. This morning, 3 friends and I reconvened to bring each other up-to-date on our activities. I was completely surprised by the fact all 4 of us did exactly what I posed – we took the tiniest portion of our business that we enjoy the most and are promoting to the fullest. The surprising part is 3 of us are anticipating more revenue than ever!

My belief is the reason for our success is that we are each now focusing on what we truly enjoy. For me, the ebook webinars are a huge hit. The fourth person was in a very hard hit industry but her passion is swimming. She mentioned in passing that she knows how to instruct swimmers to swim faster. I exclaimed, “Why don’t you start charging for swim lessons?!” She answered, “I’ve been thinking about it silently, and now that you said it, I’m going to do it!”

When your clientele hears the passion in your voice and sees the excitement in your face, they become excited too, helping to build your relationship. This is the point where attraction marketing and selling work their charm. This works on anything you want in life, including interviewing well. It’s business development at its best and turns into a very Smooth Sale!