The OGIO bags are great products. One of the guys in my office has one and I’ve been coveting it for a while. My Timbuk2 bag is one of my favorites and the OGIO looks just as durable. It may not be something I walk into a board meeting with but for an everyday business bag, it is perfect.

Corporate City Corp

Corporate City Corp

• Sales People DO NOT Produce revenue
• Follow the LeadVine for More Money in Sales
• The Neat Way to Track Receipts
• Podcast and Sales Tools that make life easier for entrepreneurs

Photo credit: Paul Hammond

As competition continues to heat up in the world of business, as rival companies are born, merged or divided, and as newer and newer innovations lead to the rise of unique business opportunities, the need for better technology keeps on increasing. Sustained growth in business today depends on catching each opportunity at the right time. Technology is one way of doing that.

Remember those long-drawn business meetings that went on for hours and ended with no good conclusion? Remember the hours that were spent in waiting for all the delegates to enter the conference room? And what about all that stress over whether you will be able to reach the conference on time because you have gone and got yourself stuck in the mother of all traffic jams?

Well, web conferencing is the answer to all your conference problems. Okay, so it still is no guarantee that you will hit upon a great idea at the conference, but web conferencing will take away some of your other woes. At least you do not have to wait unnecessarily for people who have been stuck in traffic. Traffic — the grandfather of all excuses for unpunctuality — will no longer be a valid excuse.

Web conferencing — as is made evident by the name — refers to the conducting of a meeting over the Internet. Thus, people can sit at their own computers and be connected to others by a host site. In its initial years, web conferencing involved discussions posted on a message board. However, in those early years, this was not what one might call “live”. However, soon enough, it became possible to have a “virtual” meeting via the Internet.

Web conferencing today is not only much easier, but it also provides a number of different services. For instance, one could talk over live video — not tough at all in this era of the webcam. One could also have a slide presentation, where the presenter could highlight important points of interest on the slides. A poll could be taken and there could also be a session for questions and answers. Moreover, these are only a few of the basic features of web conferencing. Try it out some time, and the ease of it all will certainly have you hooked on to the idea.

• The Value of Staying in Touch
• Overcoming Three Big Sales Myths
• Persuade People and Earn Higher
• Work To The Best Of Your Ability
• Proper Understanding Of Selling Skills!
• How An Employee Can Benefit By Telecommuting
• Top Ten Ways to Become a Great Salesperson!
• How to Build Great Relationships through Cold Calling

I think I have a functional home office, maybe even excessive. Two desktop computers synced to three 19″ monitors, an inkjet scanner/printer and a cable internet connection. This desk setup could only be better by getting a larger desk to fit everything. The last thing I wanted to buy was a bulky fax machine to take up even more of the desktop that I am already missing out on. I found my solution. Online fax services like MyFax.

Using an online fax service like MyFax makes life so much easier. MyFax is the fastest growing Internet fax service used by individuals, small, medium and large businesses to send and receive faxes using existing email accounts or the web. MyFax offers services in North America, Europe and the UK to industries recognized among the fastest growing adopters of Internet fax including finance, insurance, real estate, healthcare, transportation and government. More than 10,000 new customers subscribe to MyFax each month.

With services like this that are FREE to try, even people located in an office can benifit from the freedom of breaking away from a physical fax.

Easy as email
MyFax requires no hardware or software. All you need is Internet access, an email address, and a MyFax account.

Never miss another fax
MyFax goes where you go. Your MyFax number is tied to your email, so you can fax from home, work, and while traveling - anywhere you access the Internet.

Real savings
MyFax eliminates the need for a fax machine, fax supplies , a separate phone line for faxing, and costly maintenance. It saves you money.

At $10.00 a month after the FREE trial, there is no other service like this available.

FREE Sign Up and No Hidden Fees with MyFax.com!

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Xobni Insight is an add-on for Microsoft Outlook that offers effortless email management and provides instant access to the most important information in your email.

After a quick install, you’ll see the new Xobni toolbar appear in Outlook - and suddenly your Outlook productivity will burst to life with blazing fast email search, automatic phone number discovery, threaded conversations, and more.

The program adds a toolbar to the Outlook window. If you have a small monitor or are using a laptop then this may seem like a problem but Xobni allows you to collapse the bar into a minimal state and still lets you see relevant information.

At first I was thinking this would be a toolbar that I added, wrote a quick post on then removed after a couple of days. I have had Xobni running on my computer for the past week and it is making my communications much easier than before. Here are some basic features given on any given email.

Phone number:

I can’t tell you how many calls I make in a day. I run my own private Boiler Room and with that being said, the time I wasted looking up a phone number in the CRM or digging through email strings for the one time they gave me a direct line annoys me a lot. Xobni’s screen provides a contact phone number along with a reference to the email that it found it in.

Schedule some time:

This feature really only works if you use the Outlook calendar. By clicking the “Schedule time with NAME” button an email is automatically generated asking the recipient for a time to meet based on your scheduled events. Some of you may think this is rude. I beg to differ. Offering the times that you are available to the prospect makes the tedious task of ‘How does Thursday the 12th look?’ emails going back and forth a thing of the past.

Known associations:

One of the features that I was sold on from the beginning was the ability to see all of the names of people that have been included on past conversations. I deal with a lot of people on any given day. I am a smart guy but I cannot hold everyone’s name in my head for immediate recall. I used to have notes in each contact explaining who their assistant was and who reported to them. Xobni keeps these names in the tool bar and if you have to reference one of these people, the names and their emails are easily accessible.

Powerful email searching:

Along with all of the above features, the search tool really brings all of them together. Maybe you only remember a piece of information about the email you are looking for. Searching for the contact or the exact email is easy within Xobni. Find the people and the emails you are looking for quickly and drill into their contact information.

I have 5 free invitations available if you are interested. Leave me a comment and I’ll send you a link.

What email organization tools do you use?

• Announcing the FREE Channel Sales Playbook
• Overcoming Three Big Sales Myths
• How An Employee Can Benefit By Telecommuting

I wasn’t able to find one decent post on this but I did find several that I wanted to share from a few powerful resources.

http://www.productivity501.com/

If you are like most people you probably have a coffee cup or pencil holder full of writing instruments sitting on your desk. If you are like me, a good percentage of those pens and pencils are ones that you don’t like and will likely never use.

http://lifehacker.com/345501/top-10-telephone-tricks

When getting things done involves making phone calls, you want to spend the least amount of time and money on the horn as possible—and several tricks and services can help you do just that.

http://www.dumblittleman.com

The world is full of people who think they are going to get ahead by putting their head down and doing their work. It’s a myth that good work makes a good career. Really, good office politics makes a good career.

But why is everyone so pissy about office politics? You know who is good at office politics, people with empathy, people who are great time managers, and people who see themselves as part of a team. Which means, of course, that you should get good at office politics, because the people who are bad at it have dead-end careers, and spend their lives whining about how it’s not fair because they are so good at doing their work.

http://www.dumblittleman.com

As a freelancer, entrepreneur, or everyday office worker, there is typically not enough time accomplish all of or tasks. As the business world kicks it into high gear and adapts forums, message boards, and social networking sites as ways to communicate, it’s very difficult to remain productive.

http://www.workflowcoach.com

Derailed productivity is when you get off the track of what you really need to do.

It’s when important information falls through the cracks, or timelines don’t get met, and email, paper mail and voicemail comes in at roller-coaster speed. And, sometimes you wish you could be anywhere else but in front of your computer.

http://www.productivity501.com

Here are twelve quick tips for organizing your desk. These are things that have worked well for me.

http://webworkerdaily.com

If you keep a projects list (and I recommend it), you probably have a few projects that have been lingering there for a little while, nagging you to either finish them or banish them from the list.

http://webworkerdaily.com

The passionate worker doesn’t show up because she’s afraid of getting in trouble, she shows up because it’s a hobby that pays. The passionate worker is busy blogging on vacation… because posting that thought and seeing the feedback it generates is actually more fun than sitting on the beach for another hour. The passionate worker tweaks a site design after dinner because, hey, it’s a lot more fun than watching TV.

http://unclutterer.com

Martha Stewart’s Home and Decorating website is currently featuring a terrific Chalkboard Wall Calendar.

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Several years ago, Tracy conducted a strategic planning exercise with a large company. Executives at all levels were brought in from around the country. During the meeting, several executives from the head office were clearly detached from the session. But two young executives from distant branches, who had prepared thoroughly, were active participants in every question. During a break, the president of the company remarked to Tracy, “Did you notice how important the contributions of those two guys have been to this meeting?” A month later, Tracy learned both of those executives had been promoted to vice president (and one went on to become the president of a billion-dollar company). Shortly thereafter, he heard the company had announced the “early retirement” of the executives from the head office who had sat silently and contributed nothing to the meeting.

“The power is always on the side of the person who has prepared the most thoroughly,” says Tracy. “You job is to speak to win on every occasion. Your goal is to be seen as an important player in every conversation. Your aim is to persuade others to your point of view and to make an impact on your world. You do this by thoroughly preparing for every meeting that you hold or participate in.”

So how do you prepare to attend a meeting? Find out the purpose of the meeting and then research the issues. Make sure you have something to contribute on each issue that will be raised. And make sure you ask a question, make a statement, or take a position in the first five minutes. Those who do are viewed by other participants as having a more dominant, significant role in the meeting; those who wait to speak until much later are often ignored or dismissed as being unimportant to the meeting.

When it’s your turn to speak, use the PREP formula: state your Point of view, give your Reasons for holding this point of view, follow up with an Example of why your reasoning is correct, and then restate your Point of view. “This is an extremely effective way of impressing the meeting planners and participants with your level of preparation,” says Tracy.

Finally, pay attention to the basics. Signal that you are engaged and ready to participate by arriving early and choosing your seat with care. Select a seat facing the door and either kitty-corner or directly opposite the meeting leader. “This is essential to making your most valuable contribution and to being the most persuasive,” Tracy points out.

For more information, visit www.briantracy.com.

www.sellingpower.com 

• Turn Challenging Questions into Sales
• How to keep people from putting the seat back on airplanes.
• Determined to Succeed but Still Failing: Why?
• Avoid Getting Your E-mails Deleted
• How to Take the Sales Out of Selling
• Warming up to cold calls
• Crafting an Opening Sales Statement
• The Right Voice-Mail Message Will Get You Through
• The Importance of Individual Sales Goals
• Be CRM Savvy

1. Double your calls. Can you double the number of calls you make? If so, you can stop reading. Double your calls and, assuming everything else remains constant, you’ll double your sales. For most salespeople, however, this isn’t a realistic option. But what if you boosted your call volume by a little? Say you make 30 calls a day. Next week, try adding just three more calls a day; you’ll boost your sales by 10 percent. Once 33 calls a day is comfortable, try bumping it up again. Gradually, you’ll see some significant gains in your sales – and your income.
2. Get through more often. On a typical day, Schiffman calls 15 people and gets through to seven. He acknowledges that getting through to 14 people might be tough, but if he really focused on this area and figured out how to reach people with greater consistency, maybe he could increase his “getting through” numbers to eight or nine a day. Significant? You bet. In a year, that’s an additional 200 to 400 people he’s going to reach.
3. Get more appointments. Schiffman speaks to seven people a day and typically gets one appointment. What if he could get two? Theoretically, he’d double his sales. But even small increases, say 1.2 appointments for every seven calls, can make a dramatic difference.
4. Close more sales. You’re probably thinking, “Duh!” but look at the numbers. Schiffman’s closing ratio is one out of eight. What if he could start closing one out of seven? Or one out of six? If everything else stayed constant and this ratio improved, his sales would improve. Your challenge is to determine whether closing provides your best opportunity for doubling your income. If your closing ratio is already pretty good, probably not. But if you lag behind your peers here, this may be a good area on which to shine a spotlight.
5. Generate more dollars per sale. You need to know your customers’ share of wallet here. If they’re not spending 100 percent of the budget they’ve allocated for your kind of product or service with your company, you have an opportunity to sell more. Schiffman recalls the time a woman called him at 10:00 p.m. on a Friday night to order 10 copies of one of his books. He asked why she was calling so late and after she explained her company was trying to help its 10 distributors sell more, Schiffman suggested they meet in person. That $80 book order blossomed into a $250,000 program.

Do you know your numbers? You need to, says Schiffman, but that’s only the starting point. Once you know them, the question is: What are you going to do differently? Many reps don’t know. And if you don’t know, you can’t double your sales.

For more ideas, visit www.dei-sales.com.

www.sellingpower.com

• Turn Challenging Questions into Sales
• How to keep people from putting the seat back on airplanes.
• Determined to Succeed but Still Failing: Why?
• Avoid Getting Your E-mails Deleted
• How to Take the Sales Out of Selling
• Warming up to cold calls
• Crafting an Opening Sales Statement
• The Right Voice-Mail Message Will Get You Through
• The Importance of Individual Sales Goals
• Be CRM Savvy

SalesForce has done a good job keeping up with the needs of there corporate customers by adding new features and having a consistent update pattern that they make visible to SalesForce admins. But this is not why I love SalesForce so much.

Work anywhere

SalesForce as a CRM solution allows a mobile workforce to always be connected. The old school days of field sales people running their business off of spreadsheets should be trashed. Being able to access your company information from any connected device like a computer or mobile phone allows sales people and executives to review and update important data anytime of the day from anywhere in the world.

Customizing reports is easy

People at the top are always asking for reports. SalesForce makes this fairly simple. You can set reports up to be available to everyone or make them private. I only use a fraction of the public reports and mainly use them as templates to creat my custom reports that give me superior insight into what’s going on in my department. Having this information available makes getting reports to the executive team easy and painless. No more scrambling around trying to get a report together.

Never miss another follow up.

Part of being a great sales person is being able to juggle dozens if not hundreds of accounts at one time. Everything is a process within the sales cycle and dropping a few balls is not a luxury you can afford (literally). Creating follow up tasks and events for all of your contacts is a simple process to do and syncing this data to Outlook or your mobile device is seamless. I don’t need to be on my computer to know that I have a call in a few minutes, my iPhone reminds me like any other calendar client would. So wile on the road if I am driving from one location to another or sitting in an airport like I am currently, I don’t need to be on my computer to know when and who I need to touch base with.

What CRM do you use?

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Start Selling

When all is said and done you really should be putting together a sales plan for yourself. Getting self motivated is a whole lot better than waiting for your manager to get all over your ass for not hitting you goals. Most of your buddies in the sales teams will be taking it easy for the first couple of weeks. Making a few calls and ‘getting ready’ for the year. That’s hogwash. Start sending out the emails, making the calls and lining up your target accounts for the next year. What prospects will you hold yourself to closing in the next 12 months? What needs to be done to get there? These are the questions you should be thinking about.

Build some campaigns

Your CRM system be it SalesForce, NetSuite or some other system should have the functionality to build some campaigns. You think this is something for marketing to manage? Wrong again. You are a professional and you need to manage your sales destiny. Start setting the tasks and blocking time in your calendar to make the goals you want completed. Start automating some of your mundane tasks like emails by creating templates that allow for quick email responses to typical questions you get. For example, in my current role I locate and recruit VARs into our reseller program. I have templates for general information, different partner levels and technical data. Since most of my calls end up with another email being sent one of my templates usually fits the bill after some minor modifications. This way I don’t have to write the entire email every time I need to send something. Set dates for email blasts to the contacts that seem to always be out off reach and create a template for new customers you bring on board explaining how much you appreciate their business.

Reap the rewards

You will see the fruits of your labor well before your coworkers. By saving yourself time and starting to get the momentum rolling now, you are bound to hit your targets easier in 2008.

What are you doing to get ready for sales in 2008? 

Here is another site you should look at that has some great information.

• Turn Challenging Questions into Sales
• How to keep people from putting the seat back on airplanes.
• Determined to Succeed but Still Failing: Why?
• Avoid Getting Your E-mails Deleted
• How to Take the Sales Out of Selling
• Warming up to cold calls
• Crafting an Opening Sales Statement
• The Right Voice-Mail Message Will Get You Through
• The Importance of Individual Sales Goals
• Be CRM Savvy

David Choeng wrote a good post called 18 ways to stay focused and goes over the steps he takes to keep on track. from writing down things to do, setting IM statuses and even picking out music that will not be distracting, he seems to cover most of the bases.

Setup filters in your email. If you spend a lot of your time communicating and planning in front of your computer, chances are you deal with emails on a frequent basis. Setting up filters in your email client can be a great way of sorting out what’s important and urgent from personal stuff which can wait. Instead of dealing with a single Inbox with hundreds of unread email, you only need to deal with smaller folders categorised by project, priority and context.

On the same site he adds an additional 11 steps that supplement his other post.

Prioritizing constantly. To figure out which task I should be working on, I prioritize constantly. Some tasks are more important than others. Some tasks are more urgent than others. I’ve found that working on urgent tasks followed by tasks which have the greatest impact to work well for me - urgent tasks allow me to get things done on time and important tasks allow me to maximize the benefits I receive.

But that’s not all there is to think about. Scot young has a blog about getting more out of your life and he explains how with his hectic schedule he maximized his time in 15 minute increments.

Invest the time in sharpening your mind. Small investments here can accumulate to huge payoffs later. You could learn a new language, master a skill or become an expert in your field.

Really keeping focused and more productive could just be your workspace is completely cluttered and you need to take care of that. Checkout the happiness project for some tips on this. One thing that alot of people don’t consider could help with productivity and being more focused is the foods they eat. Need some advice on better food selections to make? Check out BootStrapper.

When it comes down to it, you may need to find ways to add time into the day. Well, scientifically adding time is not possible, but you can analyse your time and find out where you can cut things out to make sure you have the time to get the important stuff done. Lifehack.org has a post on ways to go about that.

The first step to reclaiming more time from your day is to get hold of the big chunks that aren’t being put to good use. “Good use” is a fairly subjective term here, but it could mean both work that doesn’t get much done or leisure time that isn’t enjoyable.

• Turn Challenging Questions into Sales
• How to keep people from putting the seat back on airplanes.
• Determined to Succeed but Still Failing: Why?
• Avoid Getting Your E-mails Deleted
• How to Take the Sales Out of Selling
• Warming up to cold calls
• Crafting an Opening Sales Statement
• The Right Voice-Mail Message Will Get You Through
• The Importance of Individual Sales Goals
• Be CRM Savvy

CNN Money wrote about this earlier in the year talking about the growth of the site and how it is used by some of the 8 million plus users.

LinkedIn is all about business: recruiting, sales, investment. It’s not exactly a marketplace or a job site but rather a community of more than 8 million people who rely on one another to get things done.

LinkedIn as I have said in earlier posts is an account that everyone in a professional environment should have and more importantly, something everyone should want to look its best. Think of your LinkedIn profile like your personal Hoovers page where people that find you should be given quality data.

If you have an account, you should make it look clean. Guy Kawasaki made a post on his blog “How to Change the World ” on giving your profile an extreme makeover. This is almost a step by step way of making your profile standout to business associates as well as head hunters and prospects. You may also want to take a look at a post Guy made about the Ten ways to use LinkedIn.

Most new users put only their current company in their profile. By doing so, they severely limit their ability to connect with people. You should fill out your profile like it’s an executive bio, so include past companies, education, affiliations, and activities.

Among the benefits of getting an executive bio of your experience and credentials, you also allow yourself to be searchable on sites like Google since LinkedIn has a high ranking.

As a professional, I use LinkedIn a lot and I have setup my personal SalesForce.com account to allow for LinkedIn searches right from my contacts list by modifying some basic code. You can see how to add LinkedIn to SalesForce here.

Typically unless you are working with one of the main executives of a company, you will not find any information about them on the corporate website. But with LinkedIn, you can do an easy search of the persons name and find out who they are, what they are doing currently, and also where else they have been. LinkedIn has become the professionals Yellow Pages.

As a sales person, if you are ever trying to figure out how to reach the right person in a target account, LinkedIn is a great tool to search through an entire company to find additional contacts to reach out to. Also on the flip side, if you are just targeting any current VP of marketing for some new service you are offering, you can do an advanced search for that specific title and get a fresh list of names that you can call on. this is something even large database companies like Hoovers has not figured out how to master.

• Turn Challenging Questions into Sales
• How to keep people from putting the seat back on airplanes.
• Avoid Getting Your E-mails Deleted
• Warming up to cold calls
• Crafting an Opening Sales Statement
• The Right Voice-Mail Message Will Get You Through
• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Sales Processes
• Eight Basic Selling Steps
• How to Make Winning Software Sales Calls
• How to Make Price a Non-Issue

Electronic tools like software can help, but unless you are on your computer 24/7 then you are still not completely connected to your plan. I am always online, or that’s what it would seem like if you spent a day with me. But even with my Outlook calendar, online email and blackberry, I still find it hard to take the notes I need during my daily meetings and make sure I have all the information I need all of the time. I have adjusted to a 2 step process that seems to work very well for me.

I have use too many products to gain this edge to go over. I have even tried putting together my own system but all I felt like was that I was trying to reinvent the wheel. There had to be something already available that was scalable to my specific needs. So I asked some respected friends and did some research and found the solution.

So I have not throw out the Blackberry or my other assortment of synchronized hardware and software, but I do keep a written process that helps with the times that I am not online. I use a system designed by Franklin Covey. It is a
Monarch Simulated Leather Zipper Binder.

All of my contacts are on my devices, but I have copies of my most important business and personal contacts in my binder. This is how I make sure that I never miss anything. When I am on the road, I get reminders on my phone for calls that need to be made or upcoming appointments. But when I am on a call or in a meeting and I need to set a follow up, and there is no way to get online to track my calendar, having a paper system saves the day.

I have 3 months worth of calendar items in my binder. I print off 3 months of the calendar from Outlook on an ongoing basis. and I may have to print the current month multiple times depending on how often the calendar changes. But thats what needs to be done.

Because it’s a binder, I can also keep any important datasheets, or other documents that I need on hand at any given time. Having this paper based system is the ultimate backup to my digital lifestyle and I have tried many different types of planners or systems to achieve my goals.

Franklin Covey has the most scalable planning systems around. The binders come in so many different sizes and you can make it as basic or customized as you need. They have pieces for general business people, real estate, soccer moms and even scale to allow you to create and print your own forms that can pull data from spreadsheets you have on your computer or in Outlook.

If you are having the same problems and need a supplemental paper based planning system, look at FranklinCovey.

Here is an example of the system I use.

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