Linda Bishop, President and Founder of Thought Transformation

Warm weather, blue skies and plenty of sunshine motivated me to get my car washed. The attendant inspected my filthy car and immediately recommended the more expensive service with tire detailing. (I was an easy up-sell.)

After handing over my keys, I walked to the waiting room and paid the cashier. With a few minutes, I looked around and realized the car wash used print to generate incremental revenue.

There was a rack of greeting cards—how smart. Everyone knows someone with a birthday or an anniversary, or maybe a car wash customer needs a get-well card for a friend who is under the weather. By making it easy for customers to check card-buying off their to-do list, the car wash chain made extra money.

Along with cards, they sold memo pads appealing to women, and laminated information handouts for students on topics like chemistry, math and grammar. When I got my car, they handed me a printed coupon encouraging me to make a return visit.

Who are your clients? How can they use print to create revenue? The answer to that question could create new selling opportunities for you.

For more information, please visit www.thoughttransformation.com.

Dale Rothenberger, Vice President, Winters Group & Associates, LLC

The US Postmaster testified before congress earlier this month that the USPS is facing a financial crisis and needs to undertake several major initiatives to survive. In addition to a rate hike, Saturday delivery is to be ended. Many post office facilities will close, and letter carriers will lose their jobs.

The volume of mail has dropped by almost 20% in just three years time. While much of this volume is the shift to on-line bill statements and electronic payment, a large part of this decline is due to the changing habits of consumers. The USPS is asking Congress to give it more flexibility to allow it to adapt to these changing times.

What we are really experiencing is a change in how consumers and businesses wish to be communicated with. For those of us in the marketing communication field who still believe that business is slow due to the recession and once we start seeing growth in the economy our print volumes will return, its time to face reality and see the world is changing around us.

Mail delivery will continue, but at what price? And as prices increase, marketers will look for alternate ways to get their message out to their customers and prospects. Resistance to change is inevitable, but those who can see that choices being made today will change the way we communicate tomorrow, opportunity abounds.

Anytime you get to hear or read information about “integrated cross-media marketing” take advantage of the opportunity to further your education; the payoffs can be huge particularly because you would still be in “first movers” advantageous position.

For more information on The Winters Group & Associates, please visit http://www.wintersmg.com.

Craig McConnell, President of PrintGrowPro Inc.

Despite the commercialism that has crept into amateur athletics over the years, to me, the Olympics still embody everything that is good about sports: dedication, team work, persistence, goal setting, sacrifice, hard work, winning with class, losing with class, etc.

And, I must confess, I still get a lump in my throat every time the National Anthem is played.

Did you ever stop and think about how many hours Evan Lysacek, Lindsay Vonn, or Shaun White have practiced in their lifetimes? Odds are they didn’t decide last summer that they wanted to win Olympic gold.

There is a fascinating book out that I would encourage everyone to add to their sales library: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell (he also wrote Blink).

In Chapter Two he quotes neurologist Dr. Daniel Levitin: “ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world class expert – in anything.” “In study after study of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, chess players, composers, concert pianist, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again.”

Gladwell goes on to give specific examples: the Beatles, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and actually shares this quote from John Lennon: “the more we practiced, the better we got.”

So where does that leave us in our quest to master the art of selling? Are any of us approaching 10,000 hours yet?

Prospecting, listening, presenting, networking, asking the right questions, professional persistence — are we already as good as we can get? Or, can we raise the bar, figure a way to become more valuable to our clients and start to live and work outside our comfort zone?

So as you go into tomorrow, remember the Rule of One: make one more call, learn one more thing, swim one more lap, hand write one more thank-you card, read one more page, practice your elevator speech one more time, add one more customer to your pipeline, find one more client’s PAIN, research one more prospect, and eat one more carrot.

Have a great day and go sell something.

For more information on Craig McConnell and PrintGrowPro Inc., please visit
www.printgrowpro.com/.

Peter Ebner, one of the industry’s leading sales trainer

Are you busy servicing your accounts, but not earning enough? Are you trying to earn a 6 figure income but falling short? If you’re working hard but don’t have the income to show for it, it’s probably because you’re making this costly mistake.

To listen to Ebner’s sales tip #2, click here.