Ways to energize sales

In today's competitive market, it is crucical to keep your marketing campaigns fresh, new and on target. In order to keep your marketing efforts above competitors, remember these 7 simple rules.
1. Reestablish Listening Posts
Great marketing relies entirely on understanding your customer. Knowing who they are and why they buy is only half the battle. You also need to know why the choose to buy from you. Redouble your efforts at dialogue through social media, message boards and blogs. Also, get direct feedback from customers or clients, or via your front-line salespeople.
2. Announce Special Promotions
Use special incentives to draw customers to short-term promotions. Cost-conscious consumers are always looking for good prices and great value, and promotions are a winner with most all economic groups. Coupons are increasingly vital, and there is a major rise in the desirability of online coupons.
3. Polish Lead Management
Be certain everyone who takes inbound calls asks every new lead where they heard about your company. Make the leads generated by your online, print and broadcast advertising trackable. And where possible follow up all leads within 24 hours. Today's sales are built on trusting relationships that grow from excellent customer service.
4. Focus On Fresh Ideas
Don't rely exclusively on a small team or just your marketing staff to produce fresh ideas. Make innovation everyone's responsibility with brainstorming sessions, company retreats or by giving special recognition to individuals with the smartest suggestions. If your business has few employees, assemble a seasoned advisory board or form an online advisory group made up of members of your target audience to give input in exchange for sales perks. 
5. Renew Retention CampaignsUse e-mail to crank up your retention campaign by putting it on a consistent weekly or biweekly schedule. Soon you'll have discovered which incentives and messages work best to retain and upsell current customers and convert prospects, and yield the highest return on investment.
6. Enhance Your Giving
In this era of rising social responsibility, customers and prospects want to know you're a good corporate citizen, and this is a great time to align with a nonprofit. Businesses that rely on local customers benefit from helping community-based causes. You can provide pro bono services or undertake a promotional campaign to raise charitable funds. Just be sure to promote the undertaking via your website and the press. You'll provide help where it's needed most and earn appreciation from customers that leads to sales.
7. Freshen Your Content
Since your website is generally the first place prospects go to learn more about your business, it's crucial the site's appearance and themes are current. Imagine someone following a logical path from your website through each step in your sales process, and make sure all materials and messages they encounter flow seamlessly from one to the next. With more shoppers than ever browsing the Web, it's a great way to jumpstart sales.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/217536

What we can learn from bee hives

I would bet that if you needed to turn to something or someone for tips on success, the last place you would go to would be a bee hive. People have studied bee hives and have found that even though individual bees may not be intelligent, as a swarm they are extremely smart. We can use these five guidelines that bees use to help achieve a high collective IQ in our company.

1. Remind the group's members of their shared interests and foster mutual respect, so they work together productively. The scout bees know instinctively that their interests are aligned toward choosing the optimal home site, so they work together as a team. There are no clashing curmudgeons in a bee swarm. This is very important in the workplace. If all of the employees know the main goal, they will work together to try to reach it. Having a group is almost always better than an individual.

2. Explore diverse solutions to the problem, to maximize the group's likelihood of uncovering an excellent option. The scout bees search far and wide to discover a broad assortment of possible living quarters. When you are faced with a problem at work, don't always go with the answer that comes to you first. Evaluate alternatives so you will make the best decision possible.

3. Aggregate the group's knowledge through a frank debate. Use the power of a fair and open competition to distinguish good options from bad ones. The scout bees rely on a turbulent debate among groups supporting different options to identify a winner. Whichever group first attracts sufficient supporters wins the debate. This will also help generate ideas from every angle. Nobody thinks in the same ways or patterns, so it is always a good idea to get as many views or ideas on a subject as possible.

4. Minimize the leader's influence on the group's thinking. By functioning as an impartial moderator rather than a proselytizing boss, a leader enables his group to use its combined knowledge and brainpower. The scout bees have no dominating leader and so can take a broad and deep look at their options.

5. Balance interdependence (information sharing) and independence (absence of peer pressure) among the group's members. Only if ideas are shared publicly but evaluated privately will the group be good at exploring its options and making good choices. Scout bees share freely the news of their finds, but each one makes her own, independent decision of whether or not to support a site.

http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/nov2010/ca20101112_078649.htm

Five Secrets of Charismatic Leadership

"Displaying charismatic leadership is one of the most effective ways to boost everything from motivation and creativity to productivity and plain old satisfaction. Whether it stems from low morale at the office, high anxiety at home, or a lack of clear direction from the top, far too many employees feel like they're stuck in a boat without a paddle. It's the manager's job to get those employees rowing again. But what if you fall somewhere between Ben Stein and Alan Greenspan on the charisma scale?"

The Charismatic Narrative

Hyers and machalek's company, Sage Presence, has been teaching people from government spies to managers how to influence and inspire others. The best part about this structure is that anyone can use it to present a charismatic message. 

1. Define the main character. (Hint: It's not you.)
When you address your employees or work force, your story must be about them or someone/something your audience cares about. A lot of the time people will get in front of audiences and just talk about themselves. Nobody really wants to hear someone else talk about themselves. If you are confused as to why your employees or boss doesn't listen to you, it is probably because you are trying to tell them about yourself or something you did. To get their attention you have to talk about something they are interested in, or in other words "their story".   
2. Describe the happy ending.
Also when addressing audiences, you never want the ending to be bad. You would never want to get in front of a group of people and the last thing you say is, "your job may not be here tomorrow." You can say things such as, "you all get raises this year," "your jobs are secure," or "it will be fun to come to work again." Doing this will help your audience be on "your side" because the positive words you are speaking makes you a more likable person.
3. Describe the not-so-happy beginning.
If you do have to have some sort of "not-so-happy" information in your address to the audience, make it at the beginning. Doing this will help your ending be better and it will also get the bad stuff out of the way early. You could say something along the lines of, "right now, you're unsure about where your job will be in six months," or "you're having a hard time staying motivated." It is best to have some sort of good information planned to say after this kind of statement so it will take some of the negativity away from the original statement.
4. Describe what action you want them to take.
In order for your not so happy beginning to turn out to be a happy ending, you must have the support of your audience. You have to tell them how to get to the happy ending. This could be things like telling them what it is you want them to do, pitching in to help each other, give greater effort, be more positive, get behind the new strategy for the department and so on. They have to know that the happy ending is not possible if they don't put in the effort.    
5. Just add watery eyes.
"By this point, you will now have the logical framework for a compelling story. Still, people are people and emotions are essential to motivate and influence them. A few years ago, organizational psychologists Joyce Bono of the University of Minnesota and Remus Ilies of Michigan State University discovered that emotions are a key component of charisma. Bono and Ilies found that charismatic leaders infect their teams with positive emotions simply by using positive emotional language. What that means is that charisma doesn't require raucous speeches or the kissing of babies."

http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/nov2010/ca2010112_608471.htm