May 2005

Small business employees have the opportunity to wear many hats. My main “hat” for example says Project Manager, which is a fancy way of saying I take care of and manage all client projects and make sure they’re done on time. I’m also an HTML designer, proposal writer, secretary, general manager and even a salesman from time to time.

So what makes a good salesman? Well that question would be like asking, “What makes a good baseball team?” or “What makes a good human being?” for that matter. There are obviously many functions involved in answering the above questions. With that said, however, I do believe one thing is common in all great salesmen.

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I read an article last night in Business 2.0 (a great mag btw) about the effectiveness of late night infomercials. According to the report, the industry has been adding first time clients at a rate of about 33% per year since the mid 80’s, including fortune 1000 customers. I never thought I would say this, but I guess even infomercials, if done right, can work.

Now I’m not going to start a infomercial campaign or anything, but this article led me to believe that as long as something consistently shows up, it must work. Otherwise, people wouldn’t use it. That alone should provide helpful insight in evaluating alternative marketing options for yourself, your company, or even your job.

I just read a great article that backs up my Intelligent Design post from earlier this month. It applies more towards web design but the author shares the same theory of good product design.

Sample:

Have you ever said, “I love all these new books being published, but they all look like books.” Or maybe, “That’s a beautiful car, but why does it have 4 round wheels?”

Read Article

Need a fresh color palette? Just pixelate. How many times have you sat down to start on a design and gone crazy trying to choose a color palette? What if you could just give photoshop a picture you like and have it pick the color palette for you? Well,you can.

All you have to do is select a picture, photo, or stock image you like. Nevermind what it is, just focus on the tones. Next, fire up PhotoShop and load the picture. Under the Filters menu, select Pixelate > Mosaic. Set the cell size to about 70 and you’re good to go.

My wife used a rather crafty word this evening: flippant. Know what it means? If so, you’re smarter than me, otherwise, I was going to tell but I thought you might remember it better if you looked it up. Nice word!

It’s official, the wife and I are expecting a girl. She is in good health and were looking forward to meeting her in October. Love you Lindz!

Donald Trump decides to cash in on the widely successfully online university model. Due mostly to the success of his show The Apprentice (which I stopped watching after the first season), Trump University will feature short classes on real estate, marketing, and entrepreneurship. No online degrees will be offered, rather, $300 courses that teach practice over theory. I bet this approach will be huge based off his name alone.

Laissez les jeux commencer! Any tennis fans out there? If so, the greatest tennis championship begins today in Paris (yes, it’s even better than Wimbledon). What makes The French Open so unique you may ask? Well, it’s all in the famous red clay. Clay is the slowest of playing surfaces. The ball grips on the sticky clay and bounces high. This slows the ball down and makes for exceptionally long points. The average point is around 17-20 strokes, so it can be very entertaining.

Some of you may like to know how I become a tennis fan. If so, here’s a funny story on how I began watching The French Open, and the game of tennis for that matter.

After graduating from high school, I decided to sleep in ’till noon for a week straight. I never was good at sleeping in, so I altered my plan to staying in bed until noon. The Monday after graduating, I awoke around 10:00AM. I grabbed the remote and flipped on the TV. Immediately I was watching two guys playing tennis on red clay. Now I had never really watched tennis before, so had it not been for my lethargic state I probably would have changed the channel quick like. By the end of the match I was hooked, and one week later a new tennis fan was faithfully watching the final (while still in bed).

The below article is a quick and easy read into 2-step marketing (the idea that you give something freely to your target buyer, then follow up with them). The premise is that you let potential clients build trust with you prior to you’re asking them for the sale. Offer them something of value. If they like it, they’ll be more inclined to hear your pitch.

Read article

I just finished watching Star Wars 3. While it showcases John Lucas’ talent as a movie maker, it still lacks the funny overtones and great acting of the first three films. I was really excited because some critics have said it’s as good as the originals. Sadly, I feel this one was a little over-the-top and really had some dry acting.

It’s an entertaining film though, and sheds new light on the series. The ending is done especially well so you should enjoy that. Overall, I give it a flat B.