Last week, in "A Cold Calling Horror Story" I posted a video of a guy who made 6,500 calls before getting a real prospect.  He blamed the problem on cold calling.  However, I think that he failed because he didn't bother to learn how to cold call effectively. I've appended my list of the errors he...

This is Week Three of a 52-week project/experiment in DIY marketing. Armed with nothing but a copy of the 2009 Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar and my bare wits, I'm applying the skills you need to grow a business in real time, day by day, and reporting on them week by week. You can ...

This is Week Two of a 52-week project/experiment in DIY marketing. Armed with nothing but a copy of the 2009 Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar and my bare wits, I'm applying the skills you need to grow a business in real time, day by day, and reporting on them week by week. You can fo...

by Stoney deGeyter Unlike many in our industry I'm not against what some consider annoying forms of advertising and marketing. I don't have a problem with cold calling, I don't think all unsolicited emails are spam and I don't think there is anything wrong with direct mail. Many of these things are ...

When I was growing up, the folk rock trio of Peter, Paul & Mary sang an anti-war protest song called, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" It's funny how after all these years that this tune came roaring back to me as I was thinking about disappearing prospects. Don't you just hate it wh...

With Peleg & Ilise in Boston for the HOW conference this week, previous guest mixer Jennifer Neal of K9 Design is stepping up to kick butt and name names here on the blog. Today's entry is another great lesson in cold calling. Jen, can I get you to handle mine for me? :-) Here's a short and swee...

The pathway to sales success is strewn with lost opportunities, embarrassing moments and downright stupid mistakes. In my opinion, one major difference between top sellers and average ones is their ability to turn these disasters into growth opportunities. Painful though it might be, top performers ...

One more perspective from Jennifer Neal of K9 Design, this time comparing swimming to sales and marketing. Last week, I took my kids to their first spring swimming lesson. We picked a new rec centre this time because the water was said to be warmer and for the little ones that's very important. So, ...

Today we are introducing our first series of guest posts from Jennifer Neal, of K9 Design in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Jennifer and I have been working together through the Marketing Mentor program for the past 4 months now and she is having such great results with her cold calling that she can’t ...

Charlie has had it with the sleazy hard sell from a Redzee sales guy—after bugging her daily for a month, he started urging her to log in to "her account" on Redzee so she could see the amazingly valuable traffic he was generating for her site. "He kept saying that he had clients waiting out t...