Sales & Marketing

Rough economies can take a psychological toll on small-business owners and salespeople. Often, it’s not the actual state of the economy but people’s reactions to it that cause stress. Entrepreneur magazine columnist Kristin Wehner offers these tips to stay cool under the pressure of the recession.Maintain your foundation. That means eat, sleep, exercise and spend time with friends and loved ...

It’s a quantifiable fact: Acquiring new customers is 10 times more difficult and expensive than retaining existing ones. Fortunately, it may be easier than you think to keep your clients. An experiment by Rice University professors and published in Harvard Business Review concluded that simply asking customers how a company performed is itself a great customer-retention strategy. Researchers selected two ...

Picture this: You’re out to lunch with a friend. An acquaintance of your friend happens to walk in and sits down for a few minutes to chat. After you finish talking about the weather and last night’s sports scores, the inevitable question comes up: “So, what do you do?”You’ve got 60 seconds. What do you say? If the best you ...

It might seem like common sense, but salespeople must do five things that separate successful customer relationships with missed opportunities, writes Carmine Gallo for BusinessWeek.Gallo uses Disney resort employees as an example, pointing out five can’t-miss techniques used by the salespeople at the family-entertainment juggernaut.Address customers by name.Send hand-written thank-you notes.Respond to potential customers within 24 hours.Greet customers with eye ...

America’s baby boomers are 79 million strong and control more than $2 trillion in annual spending. While much of the advertising industry is chasing the 18- to 25-year-olds, your garage-door business can’t afford to overlook the baby boomers.What do I know about baby boomers? I’ve been targeting the boomers with garage-door ads on TV for years. I am a baby ...