Dave Donelson's Blog: OutTakes, page 16

Three Horror Tales Free For "Read An eBook Week"

Like a concert violinist playing bluegrass fiddle, every writer needs to stretch his chops from time to time. I got the itch to write something different and timed the publication to celebrate "Read An eBook Week" March 6-12. It's a mini-collection of three short stories available FREE from Smashwords.com.





The genre? Horror



The title? "Blind Curve, Three Dark Tales by Dave Donelson"



The price? Free!



The tales....



Bad things happen in "The Alley," a tale told by a narrator who should know--he did some of them. Or did he? Only the victims can answer that question, and they're not talking.



Man's best friend offers the ultimate proof of his loyalty in "Bad Dog." The cute little canine doesn't care whether his master is a good man or an evil one, he simply obeys.



Benon Otema is not a criminal, he's just ambitious. A stalwart leader of his village, a successful merchant, a father and good provider, Benon should know better than to listen to tales told by a drunkard. But he does, and the story takes him to the "Blind Curve."



In addition to these three short stories, the book includes excerpts from two novels. Heart of Diamonds , a novel of scandal, love, and death in the Congo, is a thriller about diamond smuggling in the war-torn heart of Africa. Hunting Elf , a doggone Christmas story, is a comedic romp that's delightful reading any time of the year.



Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Only One Best Proposal

Some salespeople would recommend you offer a prospective customer three proposals. In this strategy, one proposal is to be more than you think the prospect's willing to spend, one is much less than you think they'd spend, and one is in the middle price range where you really expect them to buy. The reasoning behind this strategy is that the prospect won't buy the proposal that costs the least because that will make them look cheap. They won't buy the most expensive one because they can't, and they will buy the middle one because it looks like a bargain relative to the biggest one and it's the safest, middle-of-the-road choice.

This approach may be fine for some types of products or services, but I've always felt that using it seriously undermines your credibility. When you practice creative selling, you're really presenting yourself to the prospect as an expert in your field. You're sending the very clear message that you have studied their situation, analyzed their opportunities and problems, and used your expertise to come up with the optimum plan just for them. Your proposal is that optimum plan.
How can there be three best plans? When you give the prospect three different proposals, aren't you subconsciously saying that you're not sure enough of your own abilities to make a positive strong recommendation?

Another similar tactic is to give the prospect proposal "A" while keeping proposal "B" in your briefcase for use "just in case." Proposal "B" is always smaller, of course, and it's the one you whip out at the first sign of a price objection. This tactic sends two really bad signals to the prospect. The first one we've already covered: what kind of an "expert" is so unsure of himself that he can't decide which alternative is best? The second signal you're sending is a real killer, though. Having seen proposal "A" and then proposal "B," the prospect will be sure to think proposal "C" is waiting in the wings, and if they give the salesperson enough price resistance, it will appear as if by magic. Way to go! You just created your own price objection.

There's another big danger in using either of these methods to give the prospect alternative proposals to consider. Faced with choices, most humans delay making a decision. In fact, many people hate to make decisions so much that they will actually welcome choices that have to be made so they can use them as an excuse to delay giving you a final "yes" or "no."

Anyone who has been selling for more than about a week knows that the most frustrating customer isn't the one who says "no," it's the one who says "maybe." So why would you ever intentionally give the customer an excuse to "think it over?" Give them one proposal so they can give you one answer. It'll simplify your life tremendously and you'll be absolutely shocked at what it does for your time management.

A common excuse for offering alternative proposals is that the first proposal might be too expensive, so you should be ready with a fall-back position. There's nothing wrong—and many things right—with changing your proposal at the prospect's desk. After all, you're still on the first call on a new prospect and you're basing your proposal on some estimates you've prepared, not on hard data. It's unreasonable to expect that you're going to be right on target every time. You can make alterations in the proposal along with the prospect as part of your closing strategy.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Selling Ideas Keeps Your Foot In The Door

The creative seller is one who sells ideas for solutions, not just products. Selling creatively has countless advantages, and most important among them is a super-strong relationship with your customer. As soon as the prospect discovers that you've come to discuss their needs (not about your need to sell something), they'll be much more willing to listen to your proposal. When they see the amount of your time invested in their success, they'll be interested in hearing you through. And when they realize that you're bringing them, most importantly, an idea to use—providing something of value before they give you any money—their minds will open even wider.

This relationship will build on itself, creating (there's that word again) a bond between the buyer and seller based on the seller's ever-increasing value to the buyer. The creative seller gets easier access to decision-makers, moves earlier into the decision-making process, and is seen not as an adversary but as an ally. The creative seller becomes the idea resource for the customer. The buyer turns to the seller not for more products, but for more ideas on how they can enhance their own life or business.

Ideas are powerful things. They're scarce. They don't exist until someone creates them. They can be copied, but only after the original idea has been created and sold. And because 1) they are in short supply and 2) the competition can't come into the market until after the initial sale, the price of an idea is determined solely by the perceived value in the buyer's mind. No competitive bidding. No price shaving for market share. Just the seller's ability to create perceived value through understanding the customer's needs and persuasively presenting an idea to meet those needs.

There are some great tactical advantages to selling this way, too. One of my favorites is that the prospect can reject your solutions. That's right, the ease with which the customer can say "no" is actually an advantage to idea selling. Let me explain.

Traditionally, sellers walk into the prospect with a presentation listing the many reasons their product should be bought. They present their case to the prospect, giving arguments and evidence much like a lawyer in a courtroom. They then listen to the opposing case (the objections from the prospect) and rebut them as best they can. The whole process becomes about winning a courtroom debate with the prospect. Sound familiar?

When you sell ideas, though, you've always got a reason for the prospect to see you again—because you can always come up with a new idea. Remember that an idea isn't a product—it's a use, a solution to a discovered need. So, as long as you can come up with different ideas, you'll be able to get back in to see the prospect with them. You're not coming back to make the same old pitch; you're offering something new.

Of course, part of your presentation includes the reasons your product will satisfy the prospect's needs. You do need to make your arguments. But if you structure your presentation the way I suggest, the prospect will focus on the desirability of your idea instead of on the reasons for buying your product or service. Your "arguments" will go unanswered. And you'll have the opportunity to present them again as you come back over and over again with new ideas. Same arguments every time, just new ideas to get you in the door.

Another tactical advantage to selling ideas is how the prospect responds to them. The traditional seller makes a presentation full of information about his company's product or service. So what does the prospect talks about? The seller's company or his products, of course.

But when you talk about an idea—one that is unique to the prospect—they'll talk about how the solution applies (or not) to their business or personal needs. Which is what you the seller really want them to talk about. You want to hear the prospect talk about their needs, concerns, desires, and objectives. The more they talk about their needs, the better you'll be able to shape your solutions to meet them. It's a powerful feedback loop that works in your favor.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Creative Selling Principles

For many years, I've worked closely with, managed, and observed thousands of salespeople—both creative and not—while studying, practicing, and teaching system of creative selling. I discovered that selling creatively unleashes any seller's idea power—their ability to make more sales and gain personal wealth by selling ideas for solutions, not products. That's what the system is about.

And it is a system: the repeated application of proven techniques to accomplish a desired end. My system repeatedly applies creative selling to the goal of producing more sales. It is also a framework that enables you to be a more effective, efficient salesperson. When you work within that framework, you apply creative techniques to every step of the selling process from prospecting new accounts to servicing old ones. You use your personal creative talents (and we all have them) to solve problems and create opportunities for your customers to use your products or services—and for you to make more sales.

Now, down to business. There are three principles to creative selling that guide every strategic and tactical decision you make in the Creative Selling System.

The first principle is to focus your efforts on the largest potential prospects. Obvious, isn't it? If you only sell the biggest accounts, you'll sell more and work less. But many salespeople gravitate toward smaller accounts. Sometimes they think it's easier to get a small order than a big one. Or they're intimidated by a big account and the layers of bureaucracy that often comes along with that territory. There are other reasons for this tendency, but if you have it, lose it! It's just as easy to ask for "one hundred thousand" as it is to say "a thousand" and the rewards are obviously much greater.

Principle two is that you must know the customer's business before you can effectively sell them. Sure, you can stumble across some people who need your product if you make enough calls. But you're not really selling them, are you? You're just filling the order they were waiting to give you. To accomplish one of the goals of creative selling—changing your prospects' perception of their needs—you have to know what's going on in their minds to start with. You have to know enough about their business to identify needs that they didn't even know they had until you made your presentation.

The third principle is that you must sell ideas instead of product. What do I mean by ideas? They're solutions. They're ways for the prospect to use your services. They're the benefits the prospect gets from using your product instead of the features of the product. Selling ideas instead of selling product means you have to present your product in the context of the prospect's needs, not just lay out a list of its components.

A participant in my training program once called this system "consultive selling with a bang," which I thought was a pretty apt description. Just as in consultive selling, you start with a needs analysis (see principle two: know your customer). The difference lies in the way the needs analysis is done—my method is much more accurate—and the application of the creative process to finding solutions for the customer.

The biggest difference, though, is that creative selling enables you to find needs even when the prospect doesn't know he has them. Then you create solutions to those needs even if your company doesn't sell a specific product or service that directly applies. It's close to making something out of nothing—a truly creative process.


Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Engaged Employees Are Motivated Employees

As a consultant and entrepreneur who has worked with thousands of business owners, managers, and their employees to help them achieve corporate and personal growth, I was captivated by the opening exercise in the engaging book. By asking a simple question, the authors demonstrate the book's premise, that nothing is more important to the organization or the individual than engagement with their work.



It's easy for the business owner to accept this concept. They know that productivity increases and profits grow in direct relationship to the devotion of the workforce to performance. Given the demise of job security in today's economy,however, it's a lot more difficult for the employee to recognize the value of engagement to them. Karsan and Kruse spend most of the book making that case to employees and showing employers how to change their organizations so that they can reinforce it in daily operations.



Their premise is based on findings from millions of worker surveys done on behalf of their clients. Most of the case studies and anecdotal material comes from the same source. While this could have turned the book into a thinly-veiled ad for their businesses, it doesn't read that way at all. The concepts and research are presented openly, as are actionable items that could easily have been hidden behind "hire me and I'll tell you."



I was particularly intrigued by the way the book is integrated into a website full of bonus material like videos, activities, exercises, and other value-added features. Each chapter ends with a one-page summary of key takeaways for both managers and employees that can be printed as a pdf from the website for future reference. Bonus material includes videos by the authors and others that expand on the concepts presented in each chapter. The website provides a great deal of extra value for the reader.



Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Video Pitch Makes The Sale

In sales, the best prospects, the ones who really need your product or service and have the financial wherewithal to become important clients, can become your biggest challenge. Sometimes they absolutely won't give you the time of day, let alone an appointment.



Have no fear. There's a tactic that I guarantee will work every time you use it. This technique will require some extra work on your part and is a little sneaky, but it's a foolproof way to compel Mr. Big to listen to your presentation.



I guarantee that Mr. Big will view your presentation if you record it on an unlabeled DVD, put it in a plain brown wrapper, and send it addressed to him personally at his home. Note the most important detail: Neither the DVD nor the package reveals anything about the contents. If Mr. Big is human, curiosity will drive him to see what's on the disc. It's human nature—that old curiosity works every time.



Why does this technique work? I think one reason is because it's so different from what the great crowd of "normal" salespeople do. Most salespeople he won't see send presentation folders and brochures and personal letters with proposals. Those that he does see are often armed with laptops and identical presentation software. They all tend to look and sound alike.



Your video is just another selling medium—the difference is that your version has obviously been prepared just for this particular prospect at some considerable effort. It demonstrates the creative seller's willingness to work hard for the business.



Another reason is that the medium itself, video, is the next best thing to a personal sales presentation. The prospect can see the steadiness in the seller's gaze, hear the sincerity in their voice, and get caught up in their enthusiasm for the idea. You just can't do those things in a letter.



When you use this technique, be sure to execute the entire plan exactly as I presented it. Don't send a cover letter. Don't even have a return address on the package or a label on the DVD. And under no circumstances send a copy of your written proposal along with it. You can send these things under separate cover to arrive a few days after the DVD if you need to. The full impact of the curiosity factor will be lost if the prospect even suspects what the video is about.



The video needs to be playable on a dedicated DVD player, by the way, not just a computer. In fact, DVD is preferable since many people are justifiably reluctant to stick unlabeled media into their computers from fear of viruses. The same is true for storing the video online and emailing Mr. Big an anonymous link. I wouldn't click on that, would you? The home DVD player is generally isolated, though, so your DVD can be seen without concern.



And send the tape to the prospect's home if you possibly can—in that plain brown wrapper. It will receive a heck of a lot more attention there than if it lands in his office in-box with the daily junk mail. Besides, Mr. Big is much more likely to have a DVD player at home than he is at work. To get the prospect's home address, start with the telephone book white pages. If you can't find it there, ask the screener (you never know until you try). If you can't find his home address, go ahead and send it to the office.



Nothing to Lose



Whenever I advise a client to use the videotape technique, the negatives start rushing around in their brain. There's a simple positive answer to every one of them:



"I don't have a camera." Buy, rent or borrow a camera with a built-in light and microphone. And don't forget a tripod to ensure a shake-free picture.



"I'm not a TV star." Don't try to be—just make your presentation as if the camera were Mr. Big. You can ad-lib or even use cue cards if you're a little camera shy.



"I'll feel silly." If you're embarrassed about selling, get a new career.



"It won't look professional." Don't try to film "Gone with the Wind," just sit comfortably in front of the camera and talk.



"He may not have a VCR." If he's one of the less than 5 percent of Americans who don't, he'll find one.



If you're going to be a creative seller, you've got to take a chance every once in a while. Work outside the box, as they say. Try something different, you might like it. Besides, what have you got to lose—he won't even see you, right?



Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Advertising Ideas: Sales Promotion

Looking for some ideas for building sales? Though the well of sales-promoting ideas is nearly bottomless, the supply of ideas is tapped so often that there are very few truly original ones. But don't worry. Most of the old and faithful ideas work just as well. And we're going to briefly cover some of the principle types, giving a few examples of each.

Theme sales are everywhere. Anniversary sale, Presidents' Day sale, Back to School sale, the Boss is Gone sale. Every major holiday and a few imaginary ones are excuses for having a sale. So are important dates in the company's history, like the boss's birthday, the anniversary of the big fire of '06, and the ever-popular grand-reopening sale.

Price and item advertising is another sales-generating approach that's used and abused widely. Consumers are very jaded by such offers, especially when they're couched in "percent off" terms. They've also come to expect that the sale price of a given item is probably the real everyday price, so something stronger has to be presented in order to overcome their skepticism. The best approach is to be as specific as possible in the claims presented such as, "Our widgest are now on sale for $9.99 and they are available at that price only until Friday." The consumer assumes that since those specific facts can be checked easily, they must be true.

Contests are fun and can be good traffic builders if they are fresh, different, and run for a short time. The entry period has to be close enough to the awarding of prizes to prompt consumer action now. The prizes have to be enticing enough to alter the consumer's behavior. And the contest has to be simple enough to not block someone from entering.
Many businesses give away items like coffee cups or tote bags. Such premiums aren't bad, but they can be expensive on a per-customer-reached basis. Good premium items have high visibility and long user life, extending the exposure of the advertiser's message over as long a period of time as possible. Many advertisers make the mistake of offering premiums without advertising them. In other words, they reward their current customers with the free stuff (which isn't bad in itself) but they forget to let non-customers know that there's yet another reason (the free stuff) to come to their store. Once again, identifying a clearly defined goal for the campaign is an essential part of the planning process.

Loyalty programs or frequent buyer rewards are increasingly popular, driven in large part by the ever-decreasing cost of data base marketing systems. You can get air line miles for buying just about anything these days. But there are other variations on that theme that serve the same purpose, which is to get the best customer to buy ever-increasing quantities from the sponsor. Shopper bonus cards, punch cards giving a free item after the purchase of a set number of other items, percent of purchase rebates after multiple purchases are all forms of the loyalty program.

Cross promotions, which carry customers from one business to another, can be very successful. The video store that gives take-out pizza coupons. The restaurant that sells discount theater tickets. The carpet store that gives a coupon good for carpet cleaning. These are all examples of ways two different businesses can cross-promote, share the cost of the advertising, and produce an ad campaign that's greater than the sum of its parts.

You should never be at a loss for something to say in your ads. Just look around at the thousands of advertisements you see every day and borrow one you can adapt to your business goals.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Irrational Behavior Is Perfectly Explainable--Or Is It?

Despite what the economists would have us believe, there is little about human behavior that is rational. Dan Ariely's fascinating experiments prove that time and time again and, as a consultant, I can attest to the veracity of his conclusions. I've seen dozens of compensation plans for employees, for example, and many of them--especially those aimed at salepeople--are designed to give the employee incentives to work more, harder, more productively, etc. Most of these plans fail to produce the desired results completely, or at best, achieve some of the goals while creating some completely unexpected outcomes, usually much to the chagrin of management. Ariely understands why that happens, and explains it in an entertaining, accessible style that makes this book a winner.



Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Thoughtful Advertising: Consider Preferences and Positioning

Though there is a plethora of advertising strategies, a few come to mind as especially effective. And one in particular is extremely important in the context of having your message in the consumer's mind when they enter the market with the intent to buy. This strategy is called positioning.

Positioning strategy deals with the factors that influence customer choices. Why does the customer buy Coke instead of Pepsi? Are there reasons for that choice? Aren't they both essentially the same product? In blind taste tests can people really tell the difference? Most can't, but there are still decided preferences for one brand over another just as there are decided preferences for one store over another. And positioning theory addresses those preferences by looking at the factors that influence the decision.

Positions are the qualities that the consumer thinks about, or attaches, to each competitor in a category. They're things like quality, service, price, selection, friendliness, convenience, etc. The consumer places each competitor in the category in rank order in each of the pertinent qualities, thus giving each advertiser a position in their mind. The relative importance of each position—is price more important than quality when buying a loaf of bread, for example—dictates the consumer's choice of product.

A point to note is that whether one store actually has better selection and the other lower prices isn't relevant. What's important is what I perceive to be true. Once the consumer puts an advertiser in a position in their mind, it generally stays there.

The most important position
Some positions are more important than others, of course. The one that matters most is the position that the best consumer holds as most important. In other words, the prime consumer we talked about before, who represents the largest single share of sales in the category, may well consider one quality—service, let's say—more important than any other. Even if other market segments think price is tops, or selection, or convenience, the advertiser should be almost exclusively concerned with just the first position. He'll get more business from the best consumer—and therefore more business overall—if he can occupy the position as the best service provider in that consumer's mind.

Many business owners believe that price is the most important position to every consumer, so they assume that by trying to gain and hold the position as the price leader in their category, they'll garner the largest share of market. That's why almost all advertising says we're the lowest, we're the cheapest, we won't be undersold. But that's the wrong position to try to hold most of the time. Consumers in almost every category very seldom make price the number on reason that choose one store or brand over another. That includes some categories that you would think are automatically price sensitive, like supermarkets or department stores. The number one reason consumers choose supermarket A over supermarket B is cleanliness! Followed by selection. Price comes in third or fourth!

Most people choose a particular bank not because they get a lower loan rate or a higher interest rate on their savings account, but because it is the most conveniently located in relation to where they get paid.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Be Your Own Newsmaker

Working with the media is the best way to ensure that your company stays on the public's radar. The press release, a simple document that tells the media a story you want them to cover, is the heart of the publicity process. As a business owner, it is important that you send out a constant stream of press releases about all that happens in and around your business. If you sponsor or participate in associations, clubs, or trade shows, you have a plethora of topics for distribution. And if you support any charities or worthwhile causes like disaster relief funds, local or national, you have plenty of release-worthy material.

There are plenty of books with instructions and sample press releases at your local library, but if you consider writing a grammatically correct sentence similar to massaging your own forehead with a ball peen hammer, consider finding a freelancer to do the writing for you. For a surprisingly nominal fee, they'll gather the information the release should contain, write the page or so of text, and put it in a format the media outlets can use. To find one, try posting a notice at your library, calling the English department at your community college, or checking with your chamber of commerce. You don't need to make any long-term commitments, so try two or three different writers until you find somebody you can work with.

You can generally handle the distribution of the releases yourself. Once the writer gives you the copy, put it on your letterhead and send it to every media outlet you can think of. Again, your local library can help you find their addresses and contact information. The obvious ones include your local newspaper and radio stations, but don't forget the broadcast and cable television outlets, too. You never know when they're going to be in the market for a visual story featuring a snazzy product. There are also weekly papers and free tabloids as well as regional magazines, organization newsletters, and even websites and blogs devoted to local news in many communities. All of these outlets consume huge amounts of content, so they're always looking for new sources of material.

Try not to limit your campaign to one type of news. Certain editors will be receptive to technical stories about new products and services, but business editors like to hear about expansion and hiring. Consumer affairs editors look for news that will help readers save money, while lifestyle editors want features about interesting people and their flashy lives. Every mention of your company's name is a plus.

Another reason for you to distribute the releases (and to list yourself as the follow-up contact on the release), is that most reporters will call you to get more information to shape the piece to their specific readership. The electronic media will certainly call, because they'll want a sound bite or video clip from you to go with the reporter's story. Even if the media doesn't pick up a particular story from your release, it may spark a related idea they want to pursue and they're likely to turn to you as a source if they have your contact information on file.

When the media call, talk to them! They're usually working against a deadline and can't spend a lot of time waiting for you to return their calls. For the same reason, they also won't take up a lot of your time.
Being a newsmaker does have its drawbacks. But dealing with paparazzi and signing autographs is a small price to pay for frequent press coverage that will help build your company's business.


Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.