Autopilot versus CoPilot – The Human Factor
Paula Williams2018-09-05T07:42:12+00:00The autopilot is no substitute for human intelligence! There are many "labor saving" devices for pilots. We really [...]
The autopilot is no substitute for human intelligence! There are many "labor saving" devices for pilots. We really [...]
We’ve seen the necessity of good marketing and good salesmanship first hand in the last couple of years. [...]
Prospective clients often express a lot of frustration. "We have a beautiful web site. We spent a lot of money [...]
Somebody needs to tell him that this just isn't going to work. I was shredding old papers from [...]
Janus is the Roman god of choices, doorways, beginnings, and endings. And it's a good way of illustrating the [...]
We had our first live coaching session today, and in spite of a thousand things that could have gone wrong, [...]
If you've ever had a look at your website and seen a "cute" (or not so cute) message that you didn't put there, you understand the sinking feeling of having your carefully crafted marketing image suddenly turned into something that you don't want anybody to see.
In most businesses, sadly, sales is an act, not a process. -Dan Kennedy In aviation in particular, we've found that companies fail in sales for one of two reasons They consider sales as an afterthought, thinking that the "product will sell itself," or They consider each sale as an improvisational act, impulsively cold-calling leads, offering ad-hoc discounts, or otherwise "trying things" in an attempt to make a sale.
New Year's Resolutions are popular, but also popularly discarded before January is over. It's usually not for lack of willpower - it's because there are a number of problems with them -
As you're closing out the books on 2011, here's a question: How were your sales numbers for this year? If [...]
I love the Sherlock Holmes movies, and I've liked the books since I was a little kid. There was a [...]
A broadcast email is advertising, NOT marketing. Advertising and marketing are NOT synonyms. Advertising is actually a single facet of a marketing program. The difference is not trivial. In fact, I suspect it leads many companies to misuse their budgets, fail to make sales, fail to bring in adequate income, fail to pay their bills, and have to downsize or even close their doors.
"I don't have time to complete your questionnaire. Can you just give me a ballpark price on the work I want done right now?" In the past, on occasion, I've been tempted to answer this question to the best of my ability, given the information I had on hand at the time. Each time I succumbed to that temptation, I regretted it.
I've always thought that sales was some kind of dark art. Some people "have it" and some people don't, just like in the Harry Potter books, some people have uncanny magical abilities and other people don't. Ordinary people, who don't have the talents that wizards and witches do, are called "muggles."
"How nice it must be to have such a creative job," people say when I tell them I'm a marketing consultant. I always have to smile to myself. For every creative task, there are about five tasks that involve crunching, analyzing, generating, percolating or figuring out how to capture data. Data makes the difference between a powerful, reliable marketing system and "random acts of marketing."
Now, it's equally important to hire based on modern communication skills (which includes videoteleconferencing, tweeting, and a dozen other things we didn't care about five years ago) and the size of their following and influence on the Web.
Content management tools have never been more powerful and functional.
When it's your own business, you don't have the luxury of dislike. ABCI has no sales staff, and any time we spend "selling" is time spent away from serving our current clients. We do make sales calls when necessary. We just keep them to a minimum. Here's how:
There are companies in aviation and related industries for companies to get more than half of their business from referrals. If your company has been in business for more than a year or two, you should be one of them.
Many companies have a"cause" that they support - ours is the Special Operations Warrior Fund. Special Operations people have devoted [...]